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Newer 
Roosevelt Messages 


Speeches, Letters and Magazine Articles Dealing with 
the War, Before and After, and Other Vital Topics 


By 


Theodore Roosevelt 


Edited by 
William Griffith 


VOLUME THREE 


The Current Literature 
Publishing Company 
New York, 1919 


All of the concluding public addresses made by 
Theodore Roosevelt that appear in this volume were 
furnished by his literary executor, and his final articles 
contributed to, and copyrighted by, the Metropolitan 
Magazine are reprinted by permission. For permission 
to include in this volume the articles entitled, Fear 
God and Take Your Own Part, Uncle Sam’s Only 
‘Friend is Uncle Sam, Murder on the High Seas, So- 
cialism Versus Social Reform, The Farmer: The 
Corner-Stone of Civilization, The Hun Within Our 
Gates and Nine Tenths of Wisdom is Being Wise in 
Time, thanks are due to the George H. Doran Com- 
pany by whom they are copyrighted. Three addresses 
entitled Progressive Cause Greater Than Any Indi- 
vidual, A Confession of Fatth and Woman’s Place in 
Politics, made during the Presidential campaign of 
1912, were selected from manuscripts Colonel Roosevelt 
furnished to E. H. Youngman by whom they are copy- 
righted 

THE Eprror. 


CONTENTS OF VOLUME III 


PAGE 


PROGRESSIVE = = THAN ANY iia. 


UAL. : : Bees ir FT 
A ConrEssion OF Rises Ee ih bod ie gee 
WWowANS PLACE IN Politics 5 .. . .-. + 706 
DEcLINING A NOMINATION . . Saas 
NatTionaL Duty AND ae ee hehe Le Ea / 
RicHTEous PEACE AND NATIONAL UNITY . . 786 
NATIONAL PREPAREDNESS — Military — fone 

TRIAL—SociaL . . ie ence a mn eR 
SoctaLism VERSUS zee omen Fe . 804 
THE FARMER: THE CORNER-STONE OF Crvaniza- 

ee Seger Petey ats) y- 
THe Hun Wien Son eee ee oN ¢ 818 
NInE-TENTHS oF WIsDoM 1s BEING WISE IN ere 821 
Fear Gop AND TAKE YouR Own Part .. . . 82% 
Uncte SAm’s ONLy Frienp 1s Uncte Sam. . . 840 
MurbDER ON. THE HicgH Seas ....... 847 
THE ENSLAVEMENT OF THE BELGIANS . . . . 852 
APOSTLES OF FoLtty AND FatuiTy. . . . . . 854 

~ THE Duty oF Every AMERICAN . ... . . 864 
UV Mcm rere EEERIGAE oS Ot LS eek) a SE 
OnE FLAG AND ONE LANGUAGE .. . BRM ie 327) 
How To Save OURSELVES BY SAVING eee Ry 


SrPeeEp Up THE War AND TAKE THOUGHT FOR 
AFTER THE War . 


No Question oF Drivmep Powe CAN BE Tor OLER- 
ATER 2. Sh et ees AS 


Way ane Muse BE ee Seeee te on AO 


5S4i4i4 


CONTENTS OF VOL. II 


PAGE 
YANKEE Bioop VERSUS GERMAN BLooD... . . 957 
LaFayette — MArNnE-DAy ADDRESS seule theo A OZO 
AMERICANS Must nein TOGETHER OR gains To- 
GETHER ; 2 ey OO 
Wuat WILSON oes AND ‘Linco ‘Daw? Te GOK 
Tue AMERICAN NEGRO AND THE WAR . 1028 
Tue ROMANOFF SCYLLA AND THE BOLSHEVIST | 
CHARYBDIS > | 1037 
THe LeaGue or NATIONS 1046 
EyEs TO THE FRONT . 1051 
Brinc THE FicHTiING MEN Home : 1058 
SAYINGS OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT . 1062 
INDEX (60 000 ee 8 0 


NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES 


PROGRESSIVE CAUSE GREATER THAN 
ANY INDIVIDUAL 


FROM AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT MILWAUKEE, 
WIS., OCTOBER 14, I9QI2 


Just before entering the Auditorium at Mil- 
waukee, an attempt was made on Colonel Roose- 
velt’s life. The speech which follows is from 
a stenographic report, differing considerably from 
the prepared manuscript. 


FRIENDS, I shall ask you to be as quiet as pos- 
sible. I don’t know whether you fully under- 
stand that I have just been shot; but it takes more 
than that to kill a Bull Moose. But fortunately 
I had my manuscript, so you see I was going 
to make a long speech, and there is a bullet — 
there is where the bullet went through — and it 
probably saved me from it going into my heart. 
The bullet is in me now, so that I cannot make 
a very long speech, but I will try my best. 

And now, friends, I want to take advantage of 
this incident and say a word of solemn warning 
to my fellow countrymen. First of all, I want to 
say this about myself: I have altogether too im- 

749 


750 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Oct. 


portant things to think of to feel any concern over 
my own death; and now I cannot speak to you 
insincerely within five minutes of being shot. I 
am telling you the literal truth when I say that my 
concern is for many other things. It is not in the 
least for my own life. I want you to under- 
stand that I am ahead of the game, anyway. 
No man has had a happier life than I have led; a 
happier life in every way. I have been able to 
do certain things that I greatly wished to do, and 
I am interested in doing other things. I can tell 
you with absolute truthfulness that I am very 
much uninterested in whether I am shot or not. 
It was just as when I was colonel of my regiment. 
I always felt that a private was to be excused 
for feeling at times some pangs of anxiety about 
his personal safety, but I cannot understand a 
man fit to be a colonel who can pay any heed to 
his personal safety when he is occupied as he 
ought to be occupied with the absorbing desire to 
do his duty. 

I am in this cause with my whole heart and 
soul. I believe that the Progressive movement 
is for making life a little easier for all our peo- 
ple; a movement to try to take the burdens off the 
men and especially the women and children of 
this country. I am absorbed in the success of 
that movement. 

Friends, I ask you now this evening to accept 
what I am saying as absolutely true, when I tell 
you I am not thinking of my own success. JI am 
not thinking of my life or of anything connected 
with me personally. I am thinking of the move- 
ment. I say this by way of introduction, because 
I want to say something very serious to our peo- 
ple and especially to the newspapers. I don’t 


1912] THE PROGRESSIVE CAUSE 751 


know anything about who the man was who shot 
me to-night. He was seized at once by one of 
the stenographers in my party, Mr. Martin, and 
I suppose is now in the hands of the police. He 
shot to kill. He shot —the shot, the bullet went 
in here —I will show you. 

I am going to ask you to be as quiet as pos- 
sible for I am not able to give the challenge of 
the bull moose quite as loudly. Now, I do not 
know who he was or what party he represented. 
He was a coward. He stood in the darkness in 
the crowd around the automobile, and when they 
cheered me, and I got up to bow, he stepped 
forward and shot me in the darkness. 

Now, friends, of course, I do not know, as I 
say, anything about him; but it is a very natural 
thing that weak and vicious minds should be 
inflamed to acts of violence by the kind of 
awful mendacity and abuse that have been heaped 
upon me for the last three months by the papers 
in the interest of not only Mr. Debs but of Mr. 
Wilson and Mr. Taft. 

Friends, I will disown and repudiate any man 
of my party who attacks with such foul slander 
and abuse any opponent of any other party; 
and now I wish to say seriously to all the daily 
newspapers, to the Republican, the Democratic 
and the Socialist parties, that they cannot, month 
in and month out and year in and year out, make 
the kind of untruthful, of bitter assault that they 
have made and not expect that brutal, violent na- 
tures, or brutal and violent characters, especially 
when the brutality is accompanied by a not very 
strong mind ; they cannot expect that such natures 
will be unaffected by it. 

Now, friends, I am not speaking for myself at 


752 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Oct. 


all. I give you my word, I do not care a rap 
about being shot; not a rap. 

I have had a good many experiences in my time 
and this is one of them. What I care for is my 
country. I wish I were able to impress upon 
my people — our people, the duty to feel strongly 
but to speak the truth of their opponents. I say 
now, I have never said one word against any 
opponent that I cannot — on the stump — that I 
cannot defend. I have said nothing that I could 
not substantiate and nothing that I ought not to 
have said — nothing that I — nothing that, look- 
ing back at, I would not say again. 

Now, friends, it ought not to be too much to 
ask that our opponents — [speaking to some one 
on the stage] —I am not sick at all. I am all 
right. I cannot tell you of what infinitesimal 
importance I regard this incident as compared 
with the great issues at stake in this campaign, 
and I ask it not for my sake, not the least in the 
world, but for the sake of our common country, 
that they make up their minds to speak only the 
truth, and not to use the kind of slander and men- 
dacity which if taken seriously must incite weak 
and violent natures to crimes of violence. Don’t 
you make any mistake. Don’t you pity me. I 
am all right. I am all right and you cannot es- 
cape listening to the speech either. 

And now, friends, this incident that has just 
occurred — this effort to assassinate me, empha- 
sizes to a peculiar degree the need of this Pro- 
gressive movement. Friends, every good citizen 
ought to do everything in his or her power to 
prevent the coming of the day when we shall see 
in this country two recognized creeds fighting 
one another, when we shall see the creed of the 


1912] THE PROGRESSIVE CAUSE 753 


“ Havenots ” arraigned against the creed of the 
“Haves.” When that day comes then such in- 
cidents as this to-night will be commonplace in 
our history. When you make poor men — when 
you permit the conditions to grow such that the 
poor man as such will be swayed by his sense of 
injury against the men who try to hold what they 
improperly have won, when that day comes, the 
most awiul passions will be let loose and it will 
be an ill day for our country. 

Now, friends, what we who are in this move- 
ment are endeavoring to do is to forestall any 
such movement by making this a movement for 
justice now —a movement in which we ask all 
just men of generous hearts to join with the men 
who feel in their souls that hit upward which 
bids them refuse to be satisfied themselves while 
their countrymen and countrywomen suffer from 
avoidable misery. Now, friends, what we Pro- 
gressives are trying to do is to enroll rich or poor, 
whatever their social or industrial position, to 
stand together for the most elementary rights of 
good citizenship, those elementary rights which 
are the foundation of good citizenship in this 
great Republic of ours. 

My friends are a little more nervous than I 
am. Don’t you waste any sympathy on me. I 
have had an A-1 time in life and I am having it 
now. 

I never in my life was in any movement in 
which I was able to serve with such whole- 
hearted devotion as in this; in which I was able 
to feel as I do in this that common weal. I have 
fought for the good of our common country. 

And now, friends, I shall have to cut short 
touch of the speech that I meant to give you, but 


734 | NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Oct. 


I want to touch on just two or three of the points. 

In the first place, speaking to you here in Mil- 
waukee, I wish to say that the Progressive Party 
is making its appeal to all our fellow citizens 
without any regard to their creed or to their 
birthplace. We do not regard as essential the 
way in which a man worships his God or as being 
affected by where he was born. We regard it as 
a matter of spirit and purpose. In New York, 
while I was Police Commissioner, the two men 
from whom I got the most assistance were Jacob 
Riis, who was born in Denmark, and Oliver Van 
Briesen, who was born in Germany — both of 
them as fine examples of the best and highest 
American citizenship as you could find in any 
part of this country. 

I have just been introduced by one of your 
own men here— Henry Cochems. His grand- 
fathers, his father and that father’s seven broth- 
ers, all served in the United States army, and they 
entered it four years after they had come to this 
country from Germany. Two of them left their 
lives, spent their lives, on the field of battle. I 
am all right—TI am a little sore. Anybody has 
a right to be sore with a bullet in him. You 
would find that if I was in battle now I would be 
leading my men just the same. Just the same 
way I am going to make this speech. 

At one time I promoted five men for gallantry 
on the field of battle. Afterward in making some 
inquiries about them I found it happened that two 
of them were Protestants, two Catholics and one 
a Jew. One Protestant came from Germany and 
one was born in Ireland. I did not promote them 
because of their religion. It just happened that 
way. If all five of them had been Jews I would 


1912] THE PROGRESSIVE CAUSE 755 


have promoted them, or if all five had been 
Protestants I would have promoted them; or if 
they had been Catholics. 1n that regiment I had 
a man born in Italy who distinguished himself by 
gallantry; there was a young fellow, a son of 
Polish parents, and another who came here when 
he was a child from Bohemia, who likewise dis- 
tinguished themselves ; and friends, I assure you, 
that I was incapable of considering any question 
whatever, but the worth of each individual as a 
fighting man. If he was a good fighting man, 
then I saw that Uncle Sam got the benefit from 
it. That is all. 

I make the same appeal in our citizenship. I 
ask in our civic life that we in the same way 
pay heed only to the man’s quality of citizenship, 
to repudiate as the worst enemy that we can have 
whoever tries to get us to discriminate for or 
against any man because of his creed or his birth- 
place. 

Now, friends, in the same way I want our 
people to stand by one another without regard to 
differences of class or occupation. I have always 
s.ood by the labor unions. I am going to make 
one omission to-night. I have prepared my 
speech because Mr. Wilson had seen fit to attack 
me by showing up his record in comparison with 
mine. But I am not going to do that to-night. 
I am going to simply speak of what I myself have 
done and of what I think ought to be done in this 
country of ours. 

It is essential that there should be organizations 
of labor. This is an era of organization. Capi- 
tal organizes and therefore labor must organize. 

My appeal for organized labor is twofold; to 
the outsider and the capitalist I make my appeal 


756 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  {[Oct. 


to treat the laborer fairly, to recognize the fact 
that he must organize, that there must be such 
organization, that the laboring man must organ- 
ize for his own protection, and that it is the duty 
of the rest of us to help him and not hinder him 
ii. organizing. That is one-half of the appeal that 
I make. 

Now, the other half is to the labor man him- 
self. My appeal to him is to remember that as 
he wants justice, so he must do justice. I want 
every labor man, every labor leader, every organ- 
ized union man, to take the lead in denouncing 
crime or violence. I want them to take the lead 
in denouncing disorder and in denouncing the 
inciting of riot; that in this country we shall 
proceed under the protection of our laws and with 
all respect to the laws, and I-want the labor men 
to feel in their turn that exactly as justice must 
be done them so they must do justice. That they 
must bear their duty as citizens, their duty to this 
great country of ours, and that they must not 
rest content unless they do that duty to the fullest 
degree. 

I know these doctors when they get hold of me 
they will never let me go back, and there are just 
a few things more that I want to say to you. 

And here I have got to make one comparison 
between Mr. Wilson and myself, simply because 
he has invited it and I cannot shrink from it. 

Mr. Wilson has seen fit to attack me, to say 
that I did not do much against the trusts when I 
was President. I have got two answers to make 
to that. In the first place what I did, and then I 
want to compare what I did while I was President 
and what Mr. Wilson did not do while he was 
Governor. 


1912] THE PROGRESSIVE CAUSE 757 


When I took office the Anti-Trust Law was 
practically a dead letter and the Inter-State Com- 
merce Law in as poor a condition. I had to re- 
vive both laws. I did. lenforced both. It will 
be easy enough to do now what I did then, but 
the reason that it is easy now is because I did it 
when it was hard. 

Nobody was doing anything. I found speedily 
that the Inter-State Commerce Law by being 
made more perfect could be made a most useful 
instrument for helping solve some of our indus- 
trial problems. So with the Anti-Trust Law. I 
speedily found that almost the only positive good 
achieved by such a successful lawsuit as the 
Northern Securities suit, for instance, was in es- 
tablishing the principle that the Government was 
supreme over the big corporation, but that by 
itself that law did not accomplish any of the 
things that we ought to have accomplished ; and 
so I began to fight for the amendment of the 
law along the lines of the Inter-State Commerce 
Law, and now we propose, we Progressives, to 
establish an inter-State commission having the 
same power over industrial concerns that the 
Inter-State Commerce Commission has over rail- 
roads, so that whenever there is in the future a 
decision rendered in such important matters as 
the recent suits against the Standard Oil, the 
sugar — no not that — tobacco — Tobacco Trust 
— we will have a commission which will see that 
the decree of the court is really made effective; 
that it is not made a merely nominal decree. 

Our opponents have said that we intend to 
legalize monopoly. Nonsense. They have legal- 
ized monopoly. At this moment the Standard 
Oil and Tobacco Trust monopolies are legalized ; 


; 
738 | NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [Aug. 


they are being carried on under the decree of the 
Supreme Court. 
Our proposal is really to b opoly. 
Out proposal is o-put in the law —to I lay_down 
~ certain requirements, and then require the com- 
merce commission —the industrial commission — 


—to see that the trusts live up to those require- 


ments, Our op nts_have spoken as if we 
were going fo let the conm—meassa cen 
the requirements should be. Not at all. Weare 
going to put the requirements-in-the law and 
then see that the commission requires them to 
obey that law... . SG 

~T-ask-you to look at our declaration and hear 
and read our platform about social and industrial 
justice and then, friends, vote for the Progressive 
ticket without regard to me, without regard to my 
personality, for only by voting for that platform 
can you be true to the cause of progress through- 
out this Union. 


A CONFESSION OF FAITH 


FROM AN ADDRESS BEFORE THE NATIONAL CONVEN- 
TION OF THE PROGRESSIVE PARTY IN CHICAGO, 
AUGUST 6, 1912 


To you, men and women who have come here 
to this great city of this great State formally to 
launch a new party, a party of the people of the 
whole Union, the National Progressive Party, I 
extend my hearty greeting. You are taking a 
bold and a greatly needed step for the service of 
our beloved country. The old parties are husks, 
with no real soul within either, divided on arti- 


1912] A CONFESSION OF FAITH 759 


ficial lines, boss-ridden and privilege-controlled, 
each a jumble of incongruous elements, and 
neither daring to speak out wisely and fearlessly 
what should be said on the vital issues of the day. 
This new movement is a movement of truth, sin- 
cerity and wisdom, a movement which proposes 
to put at the service of all our people the col- 
lective power of the people, through their gov- 
ernmental agencies, alike in the Nation and in the 
several States. We propose boldly to face the 
real and great questions of the day, and not skill- 
fully to evade them as do the old parties. We 
propose to raise aloft a standard to which all 
honest men can repair, and under which all can 
fight, no matter what their past political differ- 
ences, if they are content to face the future and 
no longer to dwell among the dead issues of the 
past. We propose to put forth a platform which 
shall not be a platform of the ordinary and in- 
sincere kind, but shall be a contract with the 
people ; and, if the people accept this contract by 
putting us in power, we shall hold ourselves under 
honorable obligation to fulfil every promise it 
contains as loyally as if it were actually enforce- 
able under the penalties of the law. 

The prime need to-day is to face the fact that 
we are now in the midst of a great economic evo- 
lution. There is urgent necessity of applying 
both common sense and the highest ethical stand- 
ard to this movement for better economic condi- 
tions among the mass of our people if we are to 
make it one of healthy evolution and not one of 
revolution. It is, from the standpoint of our 
country, wicked as well as foolish longer to refuse 
to face the real issues of the day. Only by so 
facing them can we go forward; and to do this we _ 


760 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Aug. 


must break up the old party organizations and 
obliterate the old cleavage lines on the dead issues 
inherited from fifty years ago. 

Our fight is a fundamental fight against both 
of the old corrupt party machines, for both are 
under the dominion of the plunder league of the 
professional politicians who are controlled and 
sustained by the great beneficiaries of privilege 
and reaction. How close is the alliance between 
the two machines is shown by the attitude of that 
portion of those Northeastern newspapers, in- 
cluding the majority of the great dailies in all the 
Northeastern cities— Boston, Buffalo, Spring- 
field, Hartford, Philadelphia and, above all, New 
York — which are controlled by or representa- 
tive of the interests which, in popular phrase, are 
conveniently grouped together as the Wall Street 
interests. The large majority of these papers 
supported Judge Parker for the Presidency in 
1904; almost unanimously they supported Mr. 
Taft for the Republican nomination this year ; the 
large majority are now supporting Professor Wil- 
son for the election. Some of them still prefer 
Mr. Taft to Mr. Wilson, but all make either 
Mr. Taft or Mr. Wilson their first choice ; and one 
of the ludicrous features of the campaign is that 
those papers supporting Professor Wilson show 
the most jealous partisanship for Mr. Taft when- 
ever they think his interests are jeopardized by 
the Progressive movement — that, for instance, 
any electors will obey the will of the majority of 
the Republican voters at the primaries, and vote 
for me instead of obeying the will of the Messrs. 
Barnes-Penrose-Guggenheim combination by vot- 
ing for Mr. Taft. No better proof can be given 
than this of the fact that the fundamental concern 


1912] A CONFESSION OF FAITH 761 


of the privileged interests is to beat the new party. 
Some of them would rather beat it with Mr. 
Wilson; others would rather beat it with Mr. 
Taft; but the difference between Mr. Wilson and 
Mr. Taft they consider as trivial, as a mere matter 
of personal preference. Their real fight is for 
either, as against the Progressives. They repre- 
sent the allied reactionaries of the country, and 
they are against the new party because to their 
unerring vision it is evident that the real danger 
to privilege comes from the new party, and from 
the new party alone. The men who presided over 
the Baltimore and the Chicago conventions, and 
the great bosses who controlled the two conven- 
tions, Mr. Root and Mr. Parker, Mr. Barnes and 
Mr. Murphy, Mr. Penrose and Mr. Taggart, Mr. 
Guggenheim and Mr. Sullivan, differ from one 
another of course on certain points. But these 
are the differences which one corporation lawyer 
has with another corporation lawyer when acting 
for different corporations. They come together 
at once as against a common enemy when the 
dominion of both is threatened by the supremacy 
of the people of the United States, now aroused 
to the need of a National alignment on the vital 
economic issues of this generation. 

Neither the Republican nor the Democratic 
platform contains the slightest promise of ap- 
proaching the great problems of to-day either with 
understanding or good faith; and yet never was 
there greater need in this Nation than now of 
understanding and of action taken in good faith, 
on the part of the men and the organizations 
shaping our Governmental policy. Moreover, 
our needs are such that there should be coherent 
action among those responsible for the conduct 


762 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [Aug. 


of National affairs and those responsible for the 
conduct of State affairs; because our aim should 
be the same in both State and Nation; that is, to 
use the Government as an efficient agency for the 
practical betterment of social and economic con- 
ditions throughout this land. There are other im- 
portant things to be done, but this is the most im- 
portant thing. It is preposterous to leave such a 
movement in the hands of men who have broken 
their promises as have the present heads of the 
Republican organization (not of the Republican 
voters, for they in no shape represent the rank 
and file of the Republican voters). These men 
by their deeds give the lie to their words. There 
is no health in them, and they cannot be trusted. 
But the Democratic Party is just as little to be 
trusted. The Underwood-Fitzgerald combina- 
tion in the House of Representatives has shown 
that it cannot safely be trusted to maintain the 
interests of this country abroad or to represent 
the interests of the plain people at home. The 
control of the various State bosses in the State 
organizations has been strengthened by the action 
at Baltimore; and scant indeed would be the use 
of exchanging the whips of Messrs. Barnes, Penr 
rose and Guggenheim for the scorpions of Messrs. 
Murphy, Taggart and Sullivan. Finally, the 
Democratic platform not only shows an utter 
failure to understand either present conditions or 
the means of making these conditions better but 
also a reckless willingness to try to attract various 
sections of the electorate by making mutually in- 
compatible promises which there is not the slight- 
est intention of redeeming, and which, if re- 
deemed, would result in sheer ruin. Far-seeing 
patriots should turn scornfully from men who 


1912] A CONFESSION OF FAITH 763 


seek power on a platform which with exquisite 
nicety combines silly inability to understand the 
National needs and dishonest insincerity in prom- 
ising conflicting and impossible remedies. 

If this country is really to go forward along 
the path of social and economic justice, there 
must be a new party of Nation-wide and non-sec- 
tional principles, a party where the titular Na- 
tional chiefs and the real State leaders shall be in 
genuine accord, a party in whose counsels the 
people shall be supreme, a party that shall repre- 
sent in the Nation and the several States alike the 
same cause, the cause of human rights and of 
Governmental efficiency. At present both the old 
parties are controlled by professional politicians 
in the interests of the privileged classes, and ap- 
parently each has set up as its ideal of business 
and political development a government by finan- 
cial despotism tempered by make-believe political 
assassination. Democrat and Republican alike, 
they represent government of the needy many by 
professional politicians in the interests of the 
rich few. This is class government, and class 
government of a peculiarly unwholesome kind. 

It seems to me, therefore, that the time is ripe, 
and overripe, for a genuine Progressive move- 
ment, Nation-wide and justice-loving, sprung 
from and responsible to the people themselves, 
and sundered by a great gulf from both of the 
old party organizations, while representing all 
that is best in the hopes, beliefs and aspirations of 
the plain people who make up the immense ma- 
jority of the rank and file of both the old parties. 

The first essential in the Progressive program 
is the right of the people to rule. But a few 
months ago our opponents were assuring us with 


764 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [Aug. 


insincere clamor that it was absurd for us to talk 
about desiring that the people should rule, be- 
cause, as a matter of fact, the people actually do 
rule. Since that time the actions of the Chicago 
convention, and to an only less degree of the 
Baltimore convention, have shown in striking 
fashion how little the people do rule under our 
present conditions. 

We should provide by National law for Presi- 
dential primaries. We should provide for the 
election of United States Senators by popular 
vote. We should provide for a short ballot; 
nothing makes it harder for the people to control 
their public servants than to force them to vote 
for so many officials that they cannot really keep 
track of any one of them, so that each becomes 
indistinguishable in the crowd around him. 
There must be stringent and efficient corrupt prac- 
tices acts, applying to the primaries as well as the 
elections; and there should be publicity of cam- 
paign contributions during the campaign. 

We should provide throughout this Union for 
giving the people in every State the real right to 
rule themselves, and really and not nominally to 
control their public servants and their agencies 
for doing the public business; an incident of this 
being giving the people the right themselves to 
do this public business if they find it impossible 
to get what they desire through the existing 
agencies. I do not attempt to dogmatize as to 
the machinery by which this end should be 
achieved. In each community it must be shaped 
so as to correspond not merely with the needs 
but with the customs and ways of thought of that 
community, and no community has a right to dic- 
tate to any other in this matter. But wherever 


1912] A CONFESSION OF FAITH 765 


representative government has in actual fact be- 
come non-representative there the people should 
secure to themselves the initiative, the referendum 
and the recall, doing it in such fashion as to make 
it evident that they do not intend to use these 
instrumentalities wantonly or frequently, but to 
hold them ready for use in order to correct the 
misdeeds or failures of the public servants when 
it has become evident that these misdeeds and 
failures cannot be corrected in ordinary and 
normal fashion. The administrative officer 
should be given full power, for otherwise he can- 
not do well the people’s work; and the people 
should be given full power over him. 

I do not mean that we shall abandon represent- 
ative government; on the contrary, I mean that 
we shall devise methods by which our Govern- 
ment shall become really representative. To use 
such measures as the initiative, referendum, and 
recall indiscriminately and promiscuously on all 
kinds of occasions would undoubtedly cause dis- 
aster ; but events have shown that at present our 
institutions are not representative — at any rate 
in many States, and sometimes in the Nation — 
and that we cannot wisely afford to let this con- 
dition of things remain longer uncorrected. We 
have permitted the growing up of a breed of poli- 
ticians who, sometimes for improper political pur- 
poses, sometimes as a means of serving the great 
special interests of privilege which stand behind 
them, twist so-called representative institutions 
into a means of thwarting instead of expressing 
the deliberate and well-thought-out judgment of 
the people as a whole. This cannot be permitted. 
We choose our representatives for two purposes. 
In the first place, we choose them with the desire 


766 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Aug. 


that, as experts, they shall study certain matters 
with which we, the people as a whole, cannot be 
intimately acquainted, and that as regards these 
matters they shall formulate a policy for our bet- 
terment. Even as regards such a policy, and the 
actions taken thereunder, we ourselves should 
have the right ultimately to vote our disapproval 
of it, if we feel such disapproval. But, in the 
next place, our representatives are chosen to carry 
out certain policies as to which we have definitely 
made up our minds, and here we expect them to 
represent us by doing what we have decided ought 
to be done. All I desire to do by securing more 
direct control of the Governmental agents and 
agencies of the people is to give the people the 
chance to make their representatives really repre- 
sent them whenever the Government becomes 
misrepresentative instead of representative. 


WOMAN’S PLACE IN POLITICS 


ANYTHING that the women of this country 
want, I want to give them. Now, I base my 
hope and base my firm belief in the future of the 
American Nation because I think that the average 
American is a pretty good fellow and that his 
wife is a still better fellow. 

The New York Times, in an interview at- 
tributed to a prominent citizen who has repudiated 
it, criticized me and denounced Jane Addams for 
nominating me, and also criticized the Progressive 
Party for permitting women to be in the Pro- 
gressive convention. It attacked Miss Addams’ 
conduct as “spectacular” and “in very bad 
taste,” and also criticized me as being spectacular 


1912] WOMAN IN POLITICS 767 


because,I had “the bad taste to publicly compli- 
ment her on her action and thank her.” 

My only reference to Miss Addams was con- 
tained in the following sentence: “I wish to tell 
those who proposed and seconded my nomination 
that I appreciate to the full the significance of 
having such men and such a woman put me in 
nomination.” It will be noticed that in this sen- 
tence I did not even mention Miss Addams’ name, 
and if this allusion to Miss Addams is considered 
as being spectacular and in bad taste I should feel 
a mild curiosity to know just what would be re- 
garded as non-spectacular and in good taste. 

It would not be worth while to pay any heed to 
this article in itself; but it illustrates an attitude 
of mind sufficiently common to deserve considera- 
tion. Among the other sentences in the article 
were the following: ‘Women have no proper 
share in a political convention. We need women 
to bear children and attend to their homes. The 
men ought to be able to regulate their own politics 
and meet all needs without direct assistance of 
the women.” 

Of course, it is entirely right to say that we 
need women to bear children and attend to their 
homes ; just as it would be right to say that we 
need men to beget children and make the homes 
in which the women can live and the children be 
brought up. One statement is as true as the 
other and both come under the head of the 
obvious. 

I have said not once but scores of times that I 
put the domestic life above every other kind of 
life, that I honor the good and wise mother as I 
honor no other woman and no man, and that the 
perpetuity of the Nation depends primarily upon 


768 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [Aug. 


the average man and the average woman therein 
being the father and mother of healthy and happy 
and wisely brought-up children; children trained, 
boys and girls alike, in industry and decent con- 
duct, and to the habit of meeting with wisdom and 
with high courage the many and difficult problems 
that confront each of us in his every-day indi- 
vidual life and all of us in our collective life. 

I think the highest life, the ideal life, is the 
married life. But there are both unmarried men 
and unmarried women who perform service of 
the utmost consequence to the whole people; and 
it is equally foolish and wicked for a man to slur 
the unmarried woman when he would not dream 
of slurring the unmarried man. Bishop Brent 
in the Philippines is unmarried. He has done ad- 
mirable work there just as Jane Addams has done 
at Hull House. When the Times says that it dis- 
likes to see Miss Addams “ held up in the lime- 
light as an example for all other women to fol- 
low,” it speaks offensively, and its words are true 
only in the sense that they would be true if it had 
used them about Bishop Brent or the late Phillips 
Brooks. Again and again I have heard Bishop 
Brent held up as an example, and I have held him 
up as an example myself; and so of the late 
Phillips Brooks. And in just the same way, I 
am heartily glad to say, I have heard Jane 
Addams held up as an example and have thus held 
her up myself. The cases of the three stand on 
the same plane: all three by their lives have added 
to or are adding to our heritage of good in this 
country, and it is an absurdity to say that in recog- 
nizing this fact as regards any one of them we 
are in any shape or way explicitly or implicitly 
failing to take the position that we ought as a 


1912] WOMAN IN POLITICS 769 


matter of course to take about marriage and the 
happy married life. 

Now for the statement about women having no 
proper share in a political convention, and that 
men ought to be able to regulate their own politics 
and meet all needs without direct assistance from 
the women. 

That man knows little of our political, social 
and industrial needs as a Nation who does not 
know that in political conventions the politics that 
ought to be “ regulated ” are the politics that affect 
women precisely as much as they affect men; 
and he must be unfortunate in his list of acquaint- 
ances if he does not know women whose advice 
and counsel are preéminently worth having in re- 
gard to the matters affecting our welfare which 
it is of the utmost consequence to have dealt with 
by political conventions. 

I suppose that the troable is that the Times 
fails to understand that we intend from now on 
to make participation in “ politics” a method of 
applying ethics to our public life and both ethics 
and economics to our industrial life. Such a 
theory of public conduct is wholly incomprehensi- 
ble both to those who dominated the Republican 
convention at Chicago and to those who domi- 
nated the Democratic convention at Baltimore. 
The Progressive Party is the one party which 
since the War has dealt with real issues, and 
these real issues affect women precisely as much 
as men. The women who bear children and at- 
tend to their own homes have precisely the same 
right to speak in politics that their husbands have 
who are the fathers of their children and who 
work to keep up their homes. It is these women 
who bear children and attend to their own homes 


770 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Aug. 


and these men, their husbands, who work for 
their wives and children and homes, whom the 
Progressive Party is endeavoring to represent and 
in whose interest the Progressive Party proposes 
that the Governmental policy of this Nation shall 
hereafter be shaped. Such being the case, it is 
eminently wise that women should share in the 
political conventions, and that they should join 
with the men in regulating the politics, which are 
in no proper sense only “ the politics of the men ” 
as the Times says, because they are of as vital 
concern to the women as to the men. 

I doubt if there ever was a convention more 
really representative of the people, and with a 
higher average of individual character among the 
representatives, than was the case with the Pro- 
gressive National Convention at Chicago. The 
Spirit in which it met was a spirit of deep and 
genuine religious fervor, using the word religious 
in its broadest and truest sense. A spirit which 
found expression in singing the noble “ Battle 
Hymn of the Republic,” a hymn by the way, 
which was written by a woman, Mrs. Julia Ward 
Howe, who as wife and mother, and in all her re- 
lations of both public and private life, was one 
of the best citizens this Republic has ever brought 
forth. 

I am glad to say that among the representatives 
in our convention were a number of women; and 
not only in high purpose, but in wisdom, in char- 
acter, in cool-headedness and in far-sighted un- 
derstanding of the needs of the Nation, they stood 
on an exactly equal footing with the men. 

One of the memories of the convention which I 
shall always cherish is the fact that Jane Addams 
seconded my nomination. 


1912] WOMAN IN POLITICS 77 


I grew to believe in woman suffrage not because 
of associating with women whose chief interest 
was in woman suffrage, but because of finding out 
that the women from whom I received most aid 
in endeavoring to grapple with the social and in- 
dustrial problems of the day were themselves be- 
lievers in woman suffrage. For a long time I 
have been interested in such questions as the bet- 
terment of tenement-house conditions, the aboli- 
tion of sweat-shop factories in tenement-houses, 
the betterment of the conditions of work and 
life of working girls in industry, the establishment 
of children’s courts, the establishment of play- 
grounds, the putting a stop to the employment of 
children in industry, and dozens of other like 
matters. Now, the way I get into touch with each 
different kind of such work was to get hold of 
some man or woman who knew about it and could 
guide and instruct me and enable me to see for 
myself what the facts were. The man to whom 
I owe most in this matter is Jacob Riis, and I 
shall never forget all he did for me during the 
time I was Police Commissioner. In exactly the 
same fashion I have profited by the teachings and 
experience of Judge Ben Lindsey of Colorado, of 
Judge DeLacey of Washington, of Charles 
Stelzle, of Father Curran, of Homer Folks, of 
Paul Kellogg, of Mannis, of Raymond Robbins, 
of Weyl and McCarthy and Kingsbury — of 
many, many men connected with the work of 
organized charity and with private or religious 
charity, and of many, many clergymen, priests 
and rabbis —I cannot begin to enumerate all of 
them. 

Well, in precisely the same way I grew ac- 
quainted with women who were doing the same 


772 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [Aug. 


kinds of work, with Miss Addams, with Miss 
Kellor, with Mrs. Kelly and with many others. I 
talked with them and worked with them just as I 
did with the men. I found that they had the 
same zeal and earnestness and judgment that the 
men had, and differed among themselves just as 
the men did. I also found that as a result of 
their actual experience they felt that working girls 
would be helped by the suffrage just as working 
men are helped, and that in our warfare against 
certain dreadful evils of our social life the help 
of the women would be of peculiar value. Very 
much of what I learned to believe from them they 
were quite unconscious of having taught me, and 
it was this largely unconscious teaching of theirs 
and my study of what had been done in the States — 
where suffrage exists that gradually turned me 
into a believer that women should have the same 
right to vote that men have. I do not believe 
that there is identity of function between men and 
women, but I do believe that there should be 
equality of right. I see no reason why voting 
should interfere with women’s home life any more 
than it interferes with the every-day work of the 
man which enables him to support the home. 

Of all the planks of the Progressive platform, 
and they are all of them good, the two which most 
go to my own heart are the one which deals with 
social and industrial justice and the one on coun- 
try life. Not only the present Republican and 
Democratic platforms fail in any way to deal 
with these matters as our platform deals with 
them, but no platform previous to ours has ever 
shown an intellectual understanding of what so- 
cial and industrial justice was. Our proposals 
are definite and concrete, and they are absolutely 


1916] | DECLINING A NOMINATION 773 


practical. We treat our whole platform as a 
_ covenant with the people, binding upon ourselves 
and upon our candidates in State and in Nation. 
We pledge ourselves to legislation looking to the 
prevention of industrial accidents and occupa- 
tional diseases. We intend to deal with the prob- 
lem of involuntary unemployment and of over- 
work. We intend to secure compensation for 
men or women who are killed or crippled in in- 
dustry; to prohibit sweated labor; to secure a 
minimum wage standard for working women, and 
a living wage in all industrial occupations. We 

pledge ourselves to secure one day’s rest in seven 
for all wage-workers, and an eight-hour day in 
continuous twenty-four hour industries, the pro- 
hibition of night work and the establishment of 
an eight-hour day for women. We pledge our- 
selves to the abolition of the convict contract labor 
system, and the application of prisoners’ earnings 
to the support of their dependent families. We 
recognize that in all matters such as these women 
are as vitally concerned as men. We recognize 
that there cannot be identity of function, but that 
there should be equality of right, between men 
and women, and we are therefore for equal sui- 
frage for men and women. 


DECLINING A NOMINATION 


A STATEMENT ISSUED FROM PORT-OF-SPAIN, TRINT- 
DAD, TO THE CHAIRMAN OF THE PROGRESSIVE 
NATIONAL COMMITTEE, ON MARCH Q, 1916 


I am deeply sensible of the honor conferred on 
me and of the goodwill shown me by the gentle- 


774. NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [March 


men who have announced themselves as delegates 
to be elected in my interest in the Massachusetts 
presidential primary. Nevertheless I must re- 
quest, and I now do request and insist, that my 
name be not brought into the Massachusetts pri- 
maries, and I emphatically decline to be a candi- 
date in the primaries of that or of any other State. 
Months ago I formally notified the authorities of 
Nebraska, Minnesota and Michigan to this effect. 

I do not wish the nomination. 

I am not in the least interested in the political 
fortunes either of myself or any other man. 

I am interested in awakening my fellow coun- 
trymen to the need of facing unpleasant facts. I 
am interested in the triumph of the great prin- 
ciples for which with all my heart and soul I have 
striven and shall continue to strive. 

I will not enter into any fight for the nomina- 
tion and I will not permit any factional fight to be 
made in my behalf. Indeed, I will go further 
and say that it would be a mistake to nominate 
me unless the country has in its mood something 
of the heroic — unless it feels not only devotion 
to ideals but the purpose measurably to realize 
those ideals in action. 

This is one of those rare times which come only 
at long intervals in a nation’s history, where the 
action taken determines the basis of the life of 
the generations that follow. Such times were 
those from 1776 to 1789, in the days of Washing- 
ton, and from 1858 to 1865, in the days of 
Lincoln. 

It is for us of to-day to grapple with the tre- 
mendous national and international problems of 
our own hour in the spirit and with the ability 
shown by those who upheld the hands of Wash- 


1916] | DECLINING A NOMINATION 775 


ington and Lincoln. Whether we do or do not 
accomplish this feat will largely depend on the 
action taken at the Republican and Progressive 
conventions next June. 

Nothing is to be hoped for from the present 
administration, and the struggles between the 
President and his party leaders in Congress are 
to-day merely struggles as to whether the nation 
shall see its governmental representatives adopt 
an attitude of a little more or a little less hypoc- 
risy and follow a policy of slightly greater or 
slightly less baseness. All that they offer us is a 
choice between degrees of hypocrisy and degrees 
of infamy. 

But disgust with the unmanly failure of the 
present administration, I believe, does not, and I 
know ought not to, mean that the American peo- 
ple will vote in a spirit of mere protest. They 
ought not to, and I believe they will not, be con- 
tent merely to change the present administration 
for one equally timid, equally vacillating, equally 
lacking in vision, in moral integrity and in high 
resolve. They should desire, and I believe they 
do desire, public servants and public policies 
signifying more than adroit cleverness in escaping 
action behind clouds of fine words, in refusal to 
face real internal needs, and in complete absorp- 
tion of every faculty in devising constantly shift- 
ing hand-to-mouth and day-to-day measures for 
escape from our international duty by the aban- 
donment of our national honor — measures due to 
sheer dread of various foreign powers, tempered 
by a sometimes harmonizing and sometimes con- 
flicting dread of various classes of voters, espe- 
cially hyphenated voters, at home. 

We must clarify and define our policies, we 


776 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [March 


must show that our belief in our governmental 
ideals is so real that we wish to make them count 
in the world at large and to make the necessary 
sacrifice in order that they shall count. Surely 
we, of this great republic, have a contribution to 
make to the cause of humanity and we cannot 
make it unless we first show that we can secure 
prosperity and fair dealing among our own men 
and women. I believe that in a crisis so grave 
it is impossible too greatly to magnify the needs 
of the country or too strongly to dwell on the 
necessity of minimizing and subordinating the 
desires of individuals. 

The delegates who go to Chicago will have it in 
their power to determine the character of the ad- 
ministration which is to do or leave undone the 
mighty tasks of the next four years. That ad- 
ministration can do an incalculable amount to 
make or mar our country’s future. The men 
chosen to decide such a question ought not to be 
politicians of the average type and parochial out- 
look ; still less should they be politicians controlled 
by sinister influence from within or without. 
They should be the very best men that can be 
found in our country, whose one great mission 
should be to declare in unequivocal terms for a 
program of clean-cut, straight-out, national Amer- 
icanism, in deeds no less than in words, and in 
internal and international matters alike, and to 
choose as their candidate a man who will not 
merely stand for such a program before election, 
but will resolutely and in good faith put it 
through if elected. 

These men should be men of rugged inde- 
pendence, who possess the broadest sympathy 
with and understanding of the needs and desires 


1916] DUTY AND IDEALS 777 


of their fellows; their loyalty should be neither 
to classes nor to sections, but to the whole of the 
United States and to all the people that dwell 
therein. They should be controlled by no man 
and no interest and their own minds should be 
open. 

June is a long way off. Many things may oc- 
cur between now and then. It is utterly impos- 
sible to say now with any degree of certainty who 
should be nominated at Chicago. The crying, 
the vital need now is that the men who next June 
assemble at Chicago from the forty-eight States 
and express the view of the entire country shall 
act with the sane and lofty devotion to the inter- 
est of our nation as a whole which was shown by 
the original Continental Congress. They should 
approach their task unhampered by any pledge 
except to bring to its accomplishment every ounce 
of courage, intelligence and integrity they possess. 


NATIONAL DUTY AND INTER- 
NATIONAL IDEALS 


A SPEECH MADE BEFORE THE ILLINOIS BAR ASSO- 
CIATION AT CHICAGO, APRIL 29, 1916 


A YEAR and three-quarters have passed since 
the opening of the great war. At the outset our 
people were stunned by the vastness and terror of 
the crisis. We had been assured by many com- 
placent persons that the day of great wars had 
ended, that the reign of violence was over, 
that the enlightened public opinion of the 
world would prevent the oppression of weak na- 
tions. To be sure, there was ample proof that 


778 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [April 


none of these assurances were true, and far-seeing 
men did not believe them. But there was good 
excuse for the mass of the people being misled. 
Now, however, there is none. War has been 
waged on a more colossal scale than ever before 
in the world’s history ; and cynical indifference to 
international morality and willingness to trample 
on inoffensive peace-loving people who are also 
helpless or timid have been shown on a greater 
scale than since the close of the Napoleonic Wars 
over a century ago. Alone of the great powers, 
we have not been drawn into this struggle. 

A two-fold duty was imposed upon us by the 
fact of our prosperity and by the fact of our 
momentary immunity from danger. This two- 
fold duty was, first, to make our voice felt for the 
weak who had been wronged by the strong, and’ 
for international humanity and honor, and for 
peace on terms of justice for all concerned ; and, 
second, immediately and in thorough-going fash- 
ion to prepare ourselves so that there might not 
befall us on an even greater scale such a disaster 
as befell Belgium. We have signally failed in 
both duties. Incredible to relate, we are not in 
any substantial respect stronger at this moment 
in soldiers or rifles, in seamen or ships, because 
of any Governmental action taken in consequence 
of this war; and moreover we have seen every de- 
vice and provision designed by humanitarians to 
protect international right against international 
wrongdoings torn into shreds, and have not so 
much as ventured to speak effectively one word 
of protest. 

The result is that every nation in the world 
now realizes our weakness, and that no nation in 
the world believes in either our disinterestedness 


1916] DUTY AND IDEALS 779 


or our manliness. The effort to placate outside 
nations by being neutral between right and wrong, 
and to gain good will along professional pacifist 
lines by remaining helpless for self-defense, has 
resulted, after two fatuous years, in so shaping 
affairs that the nations either already feel, or are 
rapidly growing to feel, for us, not only dislike 
but contempt. 

This is not a pleasant truth; but it is the truth; 
and as a people we will do well to remember 
Emerson’s saying that in the long run the most 
unpleasant truth is a safer traveling companion 
than the pleasantest falsehood. Our duty is to 
face the facts and then to take the thorough-going 
action necessary in order to meet the situation 
that these facts disclose. 

Our prime duty, infinitely our most important 
duty, is the duty of preparedness. Unless we 
prepare in advance we cannot when the crisis 
comes be true to ourselves. If we cannot be true 
to ourselves, it is absolutely certain that we shall 
be false to every one else. If we are not able to 
safeguard our own national honor and interest, 
we shall make ourselves an object of scorn and 
derision if we try to stand up for the rights of 
others. We have been sinking into the position 
of the China of the Occident ; and we will do well 
to remember that China — pacifist China — has 
not only been helpless to keep its own territory 
from spoliation and its own people from subjuga- 
tion but has also been helpless to exert even the 
most minute degree of influence on behalf of right 
dealing among other nations. 

There are persons in this country who openly 
advocate our taking the position that China holds, 
the position from which the best and wisest China- 


780 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [April 


men are now painfully trying to raise their land. 
Nothing that I can say will influence the men and 
women who take this view. The holding of such 
a view is entirely incompatible with the right to 
exercise the privileges of self-government in a 
democracy, for self-government cannot perma- 
nently exist among people incapable of self-de- 
fense. 

But I believe that the great majority of my 
fellow-countrymen, when they finally take the 
trouble to think on the problem at all, will refuse 
to consent to or acquiesce in the Chinafication of 
this country. I believe that they will refuse to 
follow those who would make right helpless be- 
for might, who would put a pigtail on Uncle Sam, 
and turn the Goddess of Liberty into a pacifist 
female huckster, clutching a bag of dollars which 
she has not the courage to guard against aggres- 
sion. It is to these men and women that I speak. 
I speak to the mass of my fellow-countrymen. 
I speak to all men and women who are loyal to the 
principles of those who in the Revolutionary War 
made us a nation, and who have in their souls 
the high qualities possessed by the men who in 
the iron days of the Civil War followed the ban- 
ners of Grant and of Lee, and of the mothers 
and wives of these men. My appeal may not be 
heeded; if so, then either our people will pay 
heed in time to the appeal of some other man, able 
to speak more strongly and more convincingly, or 
else they will when it is too late learn the lesson 
from some terrible gospel in which it is written 
by an alien conqueror in letters of steel and of 
flame. 

The first necessity is that we shall in good faith 
and without reservation undertake to be a nation, 


1916] DUTY AND IDEALS 781 


and not merely to call ourselves a nation. I make 
my especial appeal to the national spirit here in 
Chicago, here in the great Middle West, here in 
the territory stretching from the Alleghanies to 
the Rockies. The prophets of gloom have said 
that the West, prosperous and indifferent, secure 
in her fancied safety because she is in the middle 
of the continent, cares nothing for the dangers 
that might befall the cities on the Atlantic or the 
Pacific Coast, cares nothing for what has befallen 
the dwellers along the Mexican boundary, and is 
as indifferent to what befalls elsewhere as Peking 
once was to what befell its outlying Chinese prov- 
inces—to the ultimate ruin of Peking, by the 
way. This I do not for one moment believe. Tf 
I did, I should despair of the republic. This is 
to a peculiar degree the democratic, the intensely 
and characteristically American, section of our 
land. The West produced for the service of the 
whole nation Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Jack- 
son ; and I know that their spirit is still the spirit 
of her sons. 

I appeal to the men of the West to take the 
lead in the movement for the genuine nationaliza- 
tion of our people. If the republic founded by 
Washington and saved by Lincoln is to be turned 
into a mere polyglot boarding-house, where dol- 
lar-hunters of twenty different nationalities 
scramble for gain, each nationality bearing no real 
allegiance except to the land from which it 
originally came, then we may as well make up our 
minds that the great experiment of democratic 
government on this continent will have failed. 
No less will it have failed if each section thinks 
only of the welfare of that section, and with crass 
blindness believes that disaster to some other sec- 


782 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [April 


tion will not affect it. And the failure will be 
the greatest of all if foolish men are persuaded by 
wicked men that one caste or class is the prime 
enemy of some other class or caste. I appeal to 
the men of the East to prepare so that the men 
of the Pacific Slope shall be free from all menace 
of danger. I appeal to the men of the West to 
prepare so that the men of the Atlantic Coast shall 
be free from all danger. I appeal to the North, 
South, West and East alike, to hold the life of 
every man and the honor of every woman on the 
most remote ranch on the Mexican border as a 
sacred trust to be guaranteed by the might of our 
entire nation — and the life of every man, woman 
and child who should be protected by the United 
States on the high seas likewise. I appeal to 
every good American, whether farmer or mer- 
chant, business man or professional man, whether 
he works with brain or hand. Anything of dis- 
grace or dishonor that befalls our people any- 
where is of vital moment to all of us wherever we 
live; and any deed that reflects credit on the 
American name is a subject of congratulation for 
every American of every section of this country. 

I speak of the United States as a whole. 
Surely it ought to be unnecessary to say that it 
spells as absolute ruin to permit divisions among 
our people along the lines of creed or of national 
origin as it does to permit division by geographical 
section. We must not stand merely for America 
first. We must stand for America first and last; 
and for no other nation second — except as we 
stand for fair play for all nations. There can be 
no divided loyalty in this country. The man who 
tries to be loyal to this country and also to some 
other country is certain in the end to put his 


1916] DUTY AND IDEALS 783 


loyalty to the other country ahead of his loyalty 
tothis. The politico-racial hyphen is the breeder 
of moral treason. We area new nation, by blood 
akin to but different from all the nations of Eu- 
rope. In the veins of our people runs the blood 
of German, Englishman and Irishman, of Scan- 
dinavian, Slav and Latin. Any one of these peo- 
ple can bring something of value to our common 
national life. Each can contribute social and 
cultural traditions and customs of value; and all 
must join in cordial mutuality of respect for 
whatever is valuable that each brings; but each 
must put the contribution at the service of our 
common and unified citizenship, and by utilizing 
all that is thus contributed, and by adapting and 
developing it so that it shall meet and express our 
common needs, we shall build our own distinctive 
national culture. . . 

No form of government will survive unless it 
can justify its existence. Boasting about democ- 
racy won’t make democracy succeed. We are 
the greatest democratic republic and we are false 
not only to our own country but to democracy 
everywhere if we do not seriously endeavor to 
show, by our actions and success, that with us 
the many men can make a nation as efficient as 
elsewhere nations have been made efficient by a 
few men. We must make America efficient 
within its own borders, efficient to repel attack 
from beyond its own borders, and yet a friend 
and not a menace to other peoples. We must 
make ourselves serviceable to democracy, to the 
cause of popular rights and popular duties in 
national and also in international matters. A 
happy-go-lucky belief that we can become service- 
able by combining sentimental speeches with 


784 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [April 


selfish actions will bring us to futility. Service- 
ableness comes only through preparedness; and 
both the training and the service — through eco- 
nomic, social and military efficiency — imply 
courage, sustained effort, clear vision, and the 
power for self-sacrifice. 

I speak for military preparedness. I speak for 
industrial preparedness. I speak for the per- 
formance of international duty, which can only 
come when we fit ourselves to do our duty to 
ourselves, and when we have made up our minds 
never to make a promise to any other nation 
which cannot be kept, which ought not to be 
kept, and which will not be kept. I speak of all 
this in the interest of national unity and man- 
hood, of international peace, and of the service 
of our country and of the world at large. It is 
our duty to secure justice and well-being at 
home ; but we live in a fool’s paradise if we think 
that we shall be permitted to secure such justice 
and well-being, as the world now is, unless we 
are prepared to hold our own against all alien 
enemies. I appeal to the men of the West; I 
appeal to Americans everywhere to stand against 
the crass materialism which can show itself just 
as much in peace as in war. I appeal to our 
people to prepare in advance so that there shall be 
n¢( hideous emergency which renders it necessary 
to submit to inordinate profit-making by the few 
simply because, when the emergency comes, we 
must improvise at whatever cost the things that 
for our sins we have failed to provide before- 
hand. We cannot afford to leave this democ- 
racy of ours inefficient. If we do it will assur- 
edly some day go down in ruin. We cannot 


1916] DUTY AND IDEALS 785 


afford to tolerate with cynical indifference the 
pork-barrel theories of government so dear to 
the hearts of politicians of the baser sort. With 
a wealth of billions of dollars, and a population 
of one hundred million, we cannot afford to be in 
a condition of utterly unstable social and indus- 
trial equilibrium, nor to see our sons grow up 
steeped in a spirit of mere selfish individualism, 
without self-control or discipline or sense of co- 
operation, or firmness of purpose. We have 
great individual capacity. This we must keep. 
But we must train it so that we shall have great 
collective capacity, so that there may be that 
collective democratic power and discipline with- 
out which no great modern democracy can per- 
manently subsist. 

We must not only do away with sectionalism 
but we must see that our land really is a melting- 
pot of citizenship and that all peoples who come 
here become Americans and nothing else. We 
have equally to dread the sleek, well-fed material- 
ist whose be-all and end-all in life are ease and 
comfort; and the base, selfish man who thinks 
only of his individual aggrandizement; and the 
foolish, boastful, wordy sentimentalist who with 
amazing ignorance fancies that Americans armed 
only with words can successfully oppose strong 
and brutal men with rifles. 

Our national character is in the balance. 
Americanism is on trial. If we produce merely 
the self-seeking, ease-loving, duty-shirking man, 
whether he be a mere materialist or a mere silly 
sentimentalist ; if we produce only the American- 
ism of the grafter and the mollycoddle and the 
safety-first, get-rich-quick, peace-at-any-price 


786 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [May. 


man, we will have produced an American faith- 
ful only to the spirit of the Tories of 1776 and 
the Copperheads of 1861, and fit only to vanish 
from the earth. 


RIGHTEOUS PEACE AND NATIONAL 
UNITY 


FROM A SPEECH MADE AT DETROIT, MAY 19, 1916 


I HAVE been very reluctant to make speeches 
during these weeks immediately preceding the 
National Nominating Conventions, because it is 
very difficult to make people understand that 
speeches at such a time are not of the ordinary 
political type made in the interest of some par- 
ticular individual’s candidacy. But I finally de- 
termined that I would come here to Michigan to 
say certain things which I believe should be said 
at this time. What I have to say to you will 
not be in the interest of any man, and least of 
all, of myself. It will not refer to the candidacy 
of any individual. It will not refer to the policy 
of any party, save as such party policy may, 
and ought to, vitally concern the welfare of the 
nation. My speech will be devoted exclusively 
to certain great principles which should be funda- 
mental in this giant democratic commonwealth of 
ours. Wherever I touch on an individual, it 
will be because I cannot make my meaning clear, 
save by speaking of individuals who embody or 
typify certain movements. 

In the history of this country this is the third 
great crisis and it coincides with a tremendous 
world crisis. The issue is: are we prepared 
with a sane and lofty idealism to fit ourselves to 


1916] RIGHTEOUS PEACE AND UNITY 787 


render great service to mankind by rendering our- 
selves fit for our own service, or are we content 
to avoid effort and labor in the present by pre- 
paring to tread the path that China has trodden? 

We must choose one course or the other. We 
shall gain nothing by making believe that we can 
avoid choosing either course. At present the 
attitude of many of our politicians in Congress 
and outside strongly resembles the attitude of 
many of the politicians in the gold and silver 
controversy of twenty years ago. At that time 
the free silver men were bold and insistent, just 
as the professional pacifists are to-day. At that 
time, as to-day, the great bulk of the politicians, 
not only in the Democratic Party but in the Re- 
publican Party, were at first mortally afraid to 
offend the free silver men. They made every 
effort to compromise, and to take some position 
that should not be either for gold or for silver. 
Above all they strove to avoid the use of the 
word “gold.” The fifty-one Republicans who, 
the other day, voted against an adequate Army 
are the spiritual successors of the Republicans 
who, twenty years ago, in Congress voted for all 
kinds of half measures which they hoped would 
convince the free silver people that we were to 
have the unlimited coinage of silver, and would 
convince the other people that we were not to 
have it. The older among you of course re- 
member how at that day the politicians squirmed 
in their effort to prevent the Republican National 
Convention from using the word “ gold”; how 
they demanded that instead we should use some 
such expression as ‘“‘ having each dollar equally 
as good as every other dollar”; how they sought 
to evade facing the issue. 


788 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [May 


But when the time came, when the lines were 
drawn, and the battle was on, it became perfectly 
evident that the only way to beat the free silver 
people was to come straight out for the gold 
standard without equivocation or timidity. The 
effort to avoid a fight on the currency, and make 
the fight only on the tariff was a failure. The 
gold men stood for a high tariff; but first and 
foremost they made the fight on the issue of 
maintaining and securing the gold standard, the 
sound money standard; and if they had tried 
double dealing and hesitation and equivocation 
they would have lost, and they would have de- 
served to lose. Let us to-day profit by their ex- 
ample. 

In any serious crisis there are always men who 
try to carry water on both shoulders. These men 
try to escape the hard necessity of choice between 
two necessarily opposite alternatives, by trying 
to work up some compromise. In actual prac- 
tice, this compromise usually proves to combine 
with exquisite nicety all the defects and none 
of the advantages of both courses. It is true 
that in ordinary political matters compromise 
is essential. It is true that in ordinary times it is 
essential. But there come great crises when 
compromise is either impossible or fatal. This 
is one of those crises. There is no use in saying 
that we will fit ourselves to defend ourselves a 
little, but not much. Such a position is equiv- 
alent to announcing that, if necessary, we shall 
hit, but that we shall only hit soft. The only 
right principle is to prepare thoroughly or not 
at all. The only right principle is to avoid hit- 
ting if it is possible to do so, but never under any 
circumstances to hit soft. To go to war a little, 


1916] RIGHTEOUS PEACE AND UNITY 789 


but not much, is the one absolutely certain way 
to ensure disaster. To prepare a little but not 
much, stands on a par with a city, developing a 
fire department which, after a fire occurs, can put 
it out a little, but not much. 

There are, at this time, two great issues before 
us, both inseparably bound together. They are 
the issues of Americanism and Preparedness. As 
a people we have to decide whether we are to be 
in good faith a people and able and ready to 
take care of ourselves; or whether we doubt our 
national unity and fear to prepare, and intend 
instead to trust partly to a merciful Providence 
and partly to elocutionary ability in high places. 
Those in power at Washington have taken the 
latter position. The followers of Mr. Ford in 
the Republican primaries have taken what is in 
reality the same position. What stand do the 
opponents of this position intend to take? The 
advocates of unpreparedness, the advocates of 
sham-preparedness, and the peace-at-any-price 
men all advocate what is in reality the same pol- 
icy. Those who stand against such a policy 
are not to be excused if they stand so half-heart- 
edly that the people do not recognize much dif- 
ference between themselves and their opponents. 
Why should the people change their government 
if they are merely to change slightly the degree 
of unpreparedness? The only sufficient reason 
for a change would be to inaugurate a policy of 
real and thoroughgoing preparedness from the 
top to the bottom, preparedness to defend our- 
selves in war, preparedness to do well and justly 
our normal work of peace. We must make this 
nation as strong as are its convictions in refer- 
ence to right and wrong. It little matters what 


790 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [May 


our ideals may be and what achievements we 
may hope for, if these ideals and achievements 
cannot be reduced to action. The events of the 
past, and the events of to-day, show that national 
ideals amount to nothing if the nation lacks the 
power to maintain them against opposition. .. . 

Now as to the pacifists. They have told us that 
if we remain helpless, we shall escape all difficul- 
ties with other nations and earn their good will. 
Let them ponder on what has happened in Mexico 
to-day. Let them ponder our relations at this 
moment with Germany and the other great pow- 
ers engaged in the world war. They will then 
realize the utter futility of their hopes. For 
nearly five years we have followed the principles 
of the pacifists as regards Mexico. We have 
not ourselves prepared; but we have helped the 
Mexicans to prepare by furnishing them arms 
and munitions. We have tamely submitted to the 
murder of our men and the rape of our women. 
We have permitted foreigners to be plundered in 
Mexico and our own people to be plundered in 
Mexico; and murder has been added to plunder. 
Many of our troops have been shot. While we 
have been nominally at peace with Mexico, the 
Mexicans have killed more American citizens 
than the Spaniards killed in the entire Spanish 
war. Moreover, when the Spanish war was 
through, it was through; and Cuba, Porto Rico, 
and the Philippines were started on a career of 
peace and prosperity such as had never been 
known in all their history. But in Mexico, after 
all the bloodshed, the trouble has only begun, and 
we are no nearer a solution than we were three 
years and a quarter ago. 

I call the attention of the pacifists to the fact 


1916] RIGHTEOUS PEACE AND UNITY 791 


that we have not avoided trouble in Mexico. 
On the contrary, although we are assured that 
we are at peace with Mexico, we have killed and 
wounded nearly as many Mexicans as were killed 
and wounded among the Spaniards when our 
armies in the Spanish War took Santiago and 
Manila. We have not gained the good will of 
the Mexicans. They hate us and despise us in- 
finitely more than they hated us five years ago 
—at which time they did not despise us at all. 
The policy of pacifism has been practically ap- 
plied in Mexico and it has resulted in incalculable 
loss of life and property. It has gained us the 
utter contempt of the people with whom we dealt ; 
and it has brought us to the verge of war with 
them. 

Exactly the same thing is true as regards Ger- 
many. For sixteen months we have been em- 
ployed in sending Germany ultimatum after ulti- 
matum in monotonous succession, while Germany 
in equally monotonous succession sank ship after 
ship, drowning our men, women and children by 
the hundreds. (I use the word “ ultimatum” in 
the sense that it has been given by our practice 
with both Mexico and Germany during the past 
three years— for under this condition an ulti- 
matum is a note which is not ultimate, but an in- 
vitation to further correspondence, and is on no 
account to be translated into action.) We have 
suffered as a nation from prolonged and exces- 
sive indulgence in note-writing; and incidentally 
we have made the discovery that note-writing is 
not an antidote to murder. The pacifists assured 
us that note-writing and similar intellectual exer- 
cises would avert all difficulties and keep foreign 
nations feeling friendly toward us. As a matter 


792 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [May 


of fact, while we have been writing these notes, 
the loss of life among non-combatant men, women 
and children on the ships which were torpedoed 
and abcut which we wrote notes, has exceeded the 
total. number of lives lost in both the Union and 
Confederate navies during the entire Civil War. 
Think of that, friends! Such has been the net 
result of our note-writing; and incidentally we 
have incurred the contemptuous dislike of all the 
great powers engaged in the war. As regards 
the loss of American lives, and the sinking of 
these ships, I hold Germany less responsible than 
I hold this nation. Germany is engaged in a life 
and death struggle; and we need not expect that 
she will forego any advantage which the weak- 
ness or timidity of our nation, of this republic, 
offers her. I firmly believe that if at the outset 
we had clearly made it evident that our words 
would be translated into deeds; that our first ulti- 
matum sixteen months ago was really an ulti- 
matum, Germany would have yielded, the Lusi- 
tania and the other ships would not have been 
sunk, and all the lamentable loss of life would 
have been avoided. It is our own attitude of cul- 
pable weakness and timidity — an attitude as- 
sumed under the pressure of the ultra-pacifists 
— which is primarily responsible for this dreadful 
loss of life, and for our national humiliation. 
We have suffered a loss of friendly feeling with 
each of the countries at war, and we have been 
within grave danger of trouble that would event- 
ually lead to our being dragged into war with 
one or more of them. I would rather go to war 
than permit our women and children to be killed. 
But it is a crime against this nation that our own 
supine folly, our weakness and vacillation, our 


1916] RIGHTEOUS PEACE AND UNITY 793 


utter failure to prepare, should expose us to the 
possibility of war without having made us ready 
for war. If, as soon as the great war broke out, 
our navy had been mobilized, and a competent 
man put at the head of the Navy Department 
(appointed for national and service reasons, in- 
stead of purely political reasons), and if we had 
begun vigorously to prepare, and had shown that 
we meant what we said, the Lusitania would 
never have been sunk; no power would have in- 
fringed on our rights; and we should to-day be 
absolutely free from all danger of war... . 

I wish to say a special word to my fellow 
Americans who are in the whole or in part of 
German blood. I very heartily admire them. I 
believe in them. I understand the difficulties un- 
der which they have labored during the last 
twenty-two months. I sympathize with, I feel 
for them, even although I feel that many of them 
are not taking the position they ought to take. I 
know that what I preach to them is hard doc- 
trine. But I believe it to be a doctrine neces- 
sary for them, and for all their—and my — 
fellow countrymen. I do not address them as 
German-Americans, for I hold that here in the 
United States ruin will come to the country in 
which our children and children’s children are 
to live—your children’s children and mine, 
friends —if we permit ourselves to be sundered 
one from the other by the lines either of creed or 
of national origin. 

I shall speak a word of my own ancestry to 
illustrite the points I am about to make. Some 
two centuries and a half ago there were certain 
Dutch immigrants, mechanics and small mer- 
chants, in New York City, which was then called 


794 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [May 


New Amsterdam. There were in Eastern Penn- 
sylvania two German peasant farmers who were 
among the founders of Germantown, having 
been driven out of the Palatinate when it was 
ravaged by the armies of Louis XIV; and west 
of them in Pennsylvania lived certain Irish, 
Welsh and English immigrants, the latter being 
Quakers. In South Carolina and Georgia were 
certain Scotch and French Huguenot farmers. 
These men and women left many descendants 
who intermarried with one another. Of these 
descendants I am one. My ancestors originally 
came from different countries, professed differ- 
ent creeds and spoke different tongues. But 
they became Americans and nothing else; and as 
the generations succeeded one another they did 
the ordinary work of American life. These an- 
cestors of mine did the same tasks that fell to 
the lot of the ancestors of all of us who are of the 
old colonial stocks. All of these men, your an- 
cestors, friends, and mine, could do their duty 
only so long as they acted purely as Americans. 
They fought in the War of the Revolution and 
again in the War of 1812; and they did not in- 
quire whether the foreign foes whom Washing- 
ton assailed were Germans, as at Trenton, or 
British, as at Princeton, or French, like those 
whom he fought near Pittsburg in his youth. 
If these old time Americans had kept apart from 
one another and had made their loyalty a loyalty 
to the countries from which they came, and not 
to this new great republic, and if their fellow 
citizens of that day had done the same thing, 
there would not be any United States now, and 
there would be no Americans to feel either 
pride or shame in what our people do. 


1916] RIGHTEOUS PEACE AND UNITY 795 


My plea is that all our citizens to-day shall 
act in the spirit of the men of many different 
tace strains—the Washingtons, Adamses and 
Lees, the Schuylers and Sullivans; the Carrolls 
and Muhlenbergs, the Marions and Herkimers — 
who disregarded all questions of national origin 
and became Americans and nothing else when 
they founded this country. 

I make the same plea precisely to the Ameri- 
cans of German birth or descent that I always 
have made and always shall make to all Ameri- 
cans, no matter what their creed or their national 
origin. I am exactly as much opposed to Eng- 
lish-Americans as to German-Americans. I op- 
pose all kinds of hyphenated Americanism. I 
ask my fellow-Americans who are partly or 
wholly of German blood to show the foreign 
foes of America who, from abroad, instigate and 
guide our traitors at home—and above all I 
ask them to show these traitors at home — that 
the immense majority of Americans of German 
descent, whether naturalized or native born, are 
loyal Americans and nothing else and that they 
stand for the honor and the interest of the United 
States should to shoulder with all other good 
Americans of no matter what creed or national 
origin. Americanism is a matter of the spirit, 
not of birthplace or descent. Among the best 
Americans I have ever known, among the man 
closest to me in social and political life, are, and 
have been, men born in, or men whose fathers 
were born in, Germany, Ireland, the Scandinavian 
kingdoms, and other European countries. They 
stand on an exact level with the other Americans, 
whose ancestors were here in Colonial times. 
We are all part of the same people. 


796 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [May 


We all stand together for our common flag 
and our common country. We must so prepare 
that this country will be a good place in which 
the children’s children of all of us shall live; and 
to do this we must so prepare that we can repel 
all foreign foes and preserve the inestimable right 
of settling for ourselves the fate of this mighty 
democratic Republic. But the essence of this 
policy of full preparedness, which remember is 
not only military but at least as much industrial 
and social, is that it is purely defensive, and is the 
best possible assurance of peace. No nation will 
ever attack a unified and prepared America. 


NATIONAL PREPAREDNESS — MILI- 
TARY — INDUSTRIAL — SOCIAL 


FROM A SPEECH MADE AT KANSAS CITY, MAY 30, 
1916 


I come to Kansas City, here in the Great West, 
to speak on Memorial Day to the farmers and 
merchants and wage workers and manufacturers 
who dwell west of the Mississippi. What I 
have to say to you is exactly what I should say 
to your fellows who dwell on the Atlantic Coast, or 
on the Pacific Slope, or beside the Great Lakes, or 
on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. My mes- 
sage is a message to all Americans. My appeal is 
to the spirit of thorough-going Americanism in all 
our people in whatever portion of the land they 
dwell. In thanking all the organizations — busi- 
ness, political and social— whose invitation I 
have accepted, including my comrades of the 
Spanish War, I know that none of you will object 


1916] PREPAREDNESS 797 


to my putting first the Grand Army of the Re- 
public and the Confederate Veterans. I come 
here to speak on behalf of the spirit which, in 
the early sixties, burned in the hearts of men who 
wore the blue and of the men who wore the gray. 
In what I have to say I shall appeal with equal 
emphasis to the soul qualities of the men who fol- 
lowed Grant and of the men who followed Lee; 
of all who, in the great crisis, proved their 
truth by their endeavor and showed themselves 
willing to sacrifice everything for the right, as 
God gave them to see the right. But I make no 
appeal to the spirit of the peace-at-any-price men 
of “61 to 65. I ask that we in this generation 
prove ourselves the spiritual heirs both of the 
men who wore the blue and of the men who 
wore the gray. But I make no appeal to the 
memory of the copperhead pacifists who put peace 
above duty, who put love of ease and love of 
money-getting before devotion to country, and 
whose convictions were too weak to stir to action 
their tepid souls. 

This is one of the great years of decision in 
our national history. The way in which we now 
decide will largely determine whether we are to 
go forward in righteousness and power or back- 
ward in degradation and weakness. We are 
face to face with elemental facts of right and 
wrong, of force or feebleness. According to the 
spirit in which we face these facts and govern 
our actions, we shall determine whether in the 
future we shall enjoy a growing national life or 
suffer a lingering national decay. 

First and foremost, friends, I ask you to be- 
ware of the false prophets, both the prophets of 
sordid materialism, and the prophets of that silly 


798 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES {May 


sentimentalism which refuses to look truths in 
the face if the truths are unpleasant. We can- 
not meet the future either by mere gross material- 
ism or by mere silly sentimentalism; above all we 
cannot meet it if we attempt to balance gross ma- 
terialism in action by silly sentimentalism in 
words. In actual practice the professional pa- 
cifists do not serve good. They serve evil. They 
do not serve high ideals. It is not righteous to 
fail to fight on behalf of assailed righteousness. 
Such a course probably means sheer cowardice, 
and certainly means moral surrender. The men 
who are the torch carriers of world civilization 
are those, and only those, who acknowledge the 
supreme duty of protecting sacred spiritual things 
when attacked. In actual practice the pro- 
fessional pacifist is merely the tool of the sensual 
materialist who has no ideals, whose shriveled 
soul is wholly absorbed in automobiles, and 
the movies, and money making, and in the policies 
of the cash register and the stock ticker, and the 
life of fatted ease. 

Two years ago any number of persons were 
assuring us that the day of great wars had passed ; 
that it was impossible that there ever should be 
great wars again; that preparedness brought on 
war ; that we did not need to take any steps in our 
own defense ; that the capitalists of the world, be- 
cause high finance had become internationalized, 
would never permit a great war; that the opinion 
of the civilized world was enough to stop all 
international outrages. This was only two years 
ago. During these two years we have seen the 
most destructive war in all history waged on a 
wider scale than ever in history before. Never 
before has there been such slaughter as has been 


1916] PREPAREDNESS 799 


compressed into the last twenty-two months; and, 
alas that it should be written, the brutality, the 
ruthlessness, the disregard for International Law, 
and the callous and calculated atrocities com- 
mitted on non-combatants, including women and 
children, have been such as the civilized world 
has not even approached during the past cen- 
tury. 

Two years ago the false prophets who said that 
there never would be another war were applauded 
by all our people who were wholly absorbed in 
money-getting ; by all who cared only for lives 
of soft ease and vapid pleasure; by all who 
liked to satisfy their emotions cheaply and safely 
by applauding high sounding phrases; and by 
the great mass of well meaning men who had not 
thought out the matter with conscientious thor- 
oughness. 

Let us not be misled again. Undoubtedly as 
soon as this war ends all the well-meaning, short- 
sighted persons, who two years ago said there 
never would be a war again, and who have been 
obliged to be silent on this particular point during 
the past two years, will once more begin their 
shrill pipings that the last war has occurred. 
Once more they will demand or announce the in- 
vention of some patent device by which strong 
and ruthless and cunning men will be held in 
place by timid men without any preparedness, 
without any display of courage or acceptance of 
endurance, risk, labor and hardship. 

When this war is over it is possible that some 
one of the combatants, being fully armed, will 
assail us because we offer ourselves as a rich and 
helpless prize. On the other hand it is also pos- 
sible that there will be temporary exhaustion 


800 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [May 


among the combatants, and a willingness, even on 
the part of the most brutal and ruthless, to go 
through the form of saying that they are peace- 
ful and harmless. In such event there will be 
real danger lest our people be influenced by the 
foolish apostles of unpreparedness to accept this 
condition as permanent, and once more to shirk 
our duty of getting ready. 

I wish to say, with all the emphasis in my 
power, that if peace in Europe should come to- 
morrow, it ought not, in the smallest degree, to 
affect our policy of preparedness. As a matter 
of fact, we probably cannot now prepare in any 
way what will have a material effect upon the 
present war. Our folly has been such that it is 
now too late for us to do this. All we can now 
do is to prepare so that the war shall leave no 
aftermath of horror and disaster for our nation. 
If we fail so to prepare then assuredly some day 
we or our children will have bitter cause to rue 
our folly, and to remember too late the words of 
old Sir Thomas Browne: “ For since we cannot 
be wise by teachings .. . there is an unhappy 
necessity that we must smart in our own skins.” 

I wish especially to call the attention of all 
people who may be momentarily misled by the 
statements of the peace-at-any-price men, the 
professional pacifists of to-day, to the actual re- 
sults of our policy of unpreparedness. Twenty- 
two months have gone by since this war began. 
Nearly five years have gone by since the revolu- 
tion in Mexico loosed on Americans in Mexico, 
and on Americans on our own side of the border, 
the forces of murder and misrule. Yet, during 
these five years we have taken no efficient steps 
to control the situation in Mexico, and during 


. 1916] PREPAREDNESS 8or 


these twenty-two months, since the world has 
been in such a cataclysm of fear and blood as 
never before in its history, we of this Republic, 
with literally astounding folly, with a folly 
criminal from the national standpoint, have re- 
fused in any way to prepare. The professional 
pacifists said, and even now say, that such pfe- 
paredness would have invited trouble with Mexico 
and trouble with Germany and perhaps with other 
old world powers. Look at the facts! We kept 
ourselves helpless to do justice to or for Mexico; 
we refused to make ready in any way to protect 
our citizens in Mexico, or even on our own side of 
the Mexican border. We submitted tamely to the 
murder of our men and the rape of our women. 
We bore with spiritless submission outrages upon 
outrages, until the number of our citizens killed 
mounted into the hundreds. Yet, so far from 
securing the good-will of the Mexicans, this 
policy of unpreparedness and of tame submission 
to insult and injury, merely aroused both their 
anger and contempt to such a degree that we are 
now engaged in a harassing little war along the 
border. 

We have not the forces to make that war effec- 
tive. We have actually drained the Coast Ar- 
tillery from the seaboard defense, to serve as in- 
fantry down on the Mexican border. This na- 
tion of one hundred million people with a terri- 
tory as large as all Europe and more wealth than 
any other nation in the world possesses, has to 
strip its seacoast forts of their defenders and put 
these defencers at work which they are not 
trained todo. Even thus we are wholly unable to 
make good our complete lack of preparedness. 

If at the outset, if three years ago, we had reso- 


802 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [May 


lutely and with foresight prepared to act, and 
then, if necessary, acted, in Mexico, that country 
would to-day be as peaceful and prosperous as 
Cuba — where we actually did take the very ac- 
tion I advocate for Mexico. If, the instant that 
the great war broke out in July, 1914, our fleet 
had been mobilized, a competent man put at the 
head of the Navy Department, our army put into 
proper trim, and steps taken by our representa- 
tives at Washington, both Executive and Legisla- 
tive, to show that we were making ready to meet 
any exigency that arose, there would have been 
no trouble of any kind with any belligerent. Of 
course, when we submitted to wrongdoing from 
one side, we invited a repetition of that wrong- 
doing by that side, and the infliction of similar 
wrongs by the other side. The thousands of non- 
combatants, men, women and children, including 
many hundreds of American men, women and 
children, who have been killed on the high seas, 
owe the loss of their lives primarily to the supine 
inaction of this nation; to our failure to prepare, 
and our failure in instant insistence on our own 
rights and on those rights of others which we had 
guaranteed to protect. 

Military preparedness is only one side of all 
around preparedness. It would be worthless un- 
less based on industrial preparedness, and both 
would be worthless unless based on preparedness 
of the soul and the spirit. You men who wore 
the Blue and the Gray, when once the war was 
over, turned to the farm and the shop and the 
counting house, and again took up your life work 
of earning your living and supporting your fam- 
ilies, and making provision for the generation that 
was to come after you. You did this work thor- 


1916] PREPAREDNESS 803 


oughly, as you had thoroughly done the work of 
war. 

Our people of to-day must apply your spirit to 
the changed circumstances of to-day. It is never 
possible to treat the past as giving the exact 
precedent for given action in the present. But 
the spirit shown by the men who in the great 
crisis in the past rose level to those crises, must 
be shown by the men of the present in the crisis 
of the present. In this country we have the 
double duty of training ourselves so as to be 
willing to die for the country and of developing 
our internal policy so as to make the country 
worth living in. In the long run the country 
must be worth living in if it is worth dying for. 

In order to make this country worth living in 
we must develop a real national purpose con- 
trolled not only by moral motives but by cool 
intelligence. If our people put a premium upon 
the demagogue by supporting the man who makes 
impossible promises, and who either does not at- 
tempt to reduce these promises to action, or else 
fails in attempting to do so, then we shall go 
down. The people must choose as their execu- 
tive and legislative leaders at Washington men 
absolutely national in spirit; men whose theory 
of government is as far as the poles from the 
pork-barrel theory — and this, whether the pork- 
barrel be considered from a personal, political or 
sectional standpoint—men who look forward 
and not back; men who face the facts as they 
actually are. After this war we shall see a new 
Europe; a Europe energetically developing new 
social and economic means of meeting new prob- 
lems. If, under these circumstances, we take 
refuge in formule dug out as fossils from the 


804 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [May 


workings of principles in the past, instead of de- 
veloping these principles so as to meet the future,. 
we shall be as foolish as if we were to arm our 
soldiers with flintlocks and send them against an 
army possessing machine guns, high power rifles, 
and modern artillery. The time for flintlock 
theories of statesmanship in this country is past. 

The end we have in view is a high and fine 
national life based on an industrial efficiency 
which shall be accompanied by social and eco- 
nomic justice. Military preparedness against 
war is merely a means to this end. But it is an 
indispensable means. We are not fit to be free 
men unless we show the forethought and will 
power necessary to insure that we ourselves shall 
have the right to decide our own destinies, and 
not be forced helplessly to submit to have them 
decided by alien conquerors. 


SOCIALISM VERSUS SOCIAL 
REFORM 


It is always difficult to discuss a question when 
it proves impossible to define the terms in which 
that question is to be discussed. ‘Therefore there 
is not much to be gained by a discussion of So- 
cialism versus Individualism in the abstract. 
Neither absolute Individualism nor absolute So- 
cialism would be compatible with civilization at 
all; and among the arguments of the extremists 
of either side the only unanswerable ones are 
those which show the absurdity of the position of 
the other. Not so much as the first step towards 
real civilization can be taken until there arises 


1916] SOCIALISM VS, SOCIAL REFORM 805 


some development of the right of private prop- 
erty; that is, until men pass out of the stage of 
savage socialism in which the violent and. the 
thriftless forcibly constitute themselves co-heirs 
with the industrious and the intelligent in what 
the labor of the latter produces. But it is equally 
true that every step toward civilization is marked 
by a check on individualism. The ages that have 
passed have fettered the individualism which 
found expression in physical violence, and we 
are now endeavoring to put shackles on that kind 
of individualism which finds expression in craft 
and greed. There is growth in all such matters. 
The individualism of the Tweed Ring type would 
have seemed both commonplace and meritorious 
to the Merovingian Franks, where it was not 
entirely beyond their comprehension; and so in 
future ages, if the world progresses as we hope 
and believe it will progress, the standards of 
conduct which permit individuals to make money 
out of pestilential tenements or by the manipula- 
tion of stocks, or to refuse to share with their 
employees the burdens laid upon the latter by old 
age and by the inevitable physical risks in a given 
business, will seem as amazing to our descendants 
as we now find the standards of a society which 
regarded Clovis and his immediate successors as 
preeminently fit for leadership. 

There are many American “ Socialists” to 
whom “Socialism” is merely a rather vaguely 
conceived catchword, and who use it to express 
their discontent with existing wrongs and their 
purpose to correct them. These may be men of 
high character, who wish to protest against con- 
crete and cruel injustice. So far as they make 
any proposals which tend towards betterment, we 


806 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [May 


can wisely act with them. But the real, logical, 
advanced Socialists, who teach their faith as both 
a creed and a party platform, may deceive to 
their ruin decent and well-meaning, but short- 
sighted men; and there is need of plain speaking 
in order accurately to show the trend of their 
teaching. The leaders of the Socialist party 
have, in the present war, shown themselves the 
enemies of America, and the tools of German 
militaristic brutality. 

The immorality and absurdity of the doctrines 
of Socialism as propounded by these advanced 
advocates are quite as great as those of the 
advocates of an unlimited individualism. As an 
academic matter Herbert Spencer stands as far 
to one side of the line of sane action as Marx 
stands on the other. But practically there is 
more need of refutation of the creed of absolute 
Socialism than of the creed of absolute individ- 
ualism; for it happens that at the present time 
a greater number of visionaries, both sinister and 
merely dreamy, believe in the former than in the 
latter. One difficulty in arguing with professed 
Socialists of the extreme type, however, is that 
those of them who are sincere almost invariably 
suffer from great looseness of thought; for if 
they did not keep their faith nebulous, it would at 
once become abhorrent in the eyes of any upright 
and sensible man. The doctrinaire Socialists, the 
extremists, the self-styled “ scientific ” Socialists, 
the men who represent the doctrine in its most 
advanced form, are, and must necessarily be, not 
only convinced opponents of private property, but 
also bitterly hostile to religion and morality; in 
short, they must be opposed to all those principles 
through which, and through which alone, even an 


1916] SOCIALISM VS. SOCIAL REFORM 807 


imperfect civilization can be built up by slow ad- 
vances through the ages. 

Indeed, these thoroughgoing Socialists occupy, 
in relation to all morality, and especially to do- 
mestic morality, a position which can only be de- 
scribed as revolting. In America the leaders 
even of this type have usually been cautious 
about stating frankly that they proposed to sub- 
stitute free love for married and family life as 
we have it, although many of them do in a round- 
about way uphold this position. In places on the 
continent of Europe, however, they are more 
straightforward, their attitude being that of the 
extreme French Socialist writer, M. Gabrielle 
Deville, who announces that the Socialists intend 
to do away with both prostitution and marriage, 
which he regards as equally wicked — his method 
of doing away with prostitution being to make 
unchastity universal. Professor Carl Pearson, a 
leading English Socialist, states their position ex- 
actly: “The sex relation of the future will not 
be regarded as a union for the birth of children, 
but as the closest form of friendship between man 
and woman. It will be accompanied by no child- 
bearing or rearing, or by this in a much more 
limited number than at present. With the sex 
relationship, so long as it does not result in chil- 
dren, we hold that the state in the future will in 
no wise interfere, but when it does result in 
children, then the state will have a right to inter- 
fere.” He then goes on to point out that in order 
to save the woman from “ economic dependence ” 
upon the father of her children, the children will 
be raised at the expense of the state; the usual 
plan being to have huge buildings like foundling 
asylums. 


808 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [May 


Mr. Pearson is a scientific man who, in his own 
realm, is worthy of serious heed, and the above 
quotation states in naked form just what logical 
scientific Socialism would really come to. Aside 
from its thoroughly repulsive quality, it ought not 
to be necessary to point out that the condition 
of affairs aimed at would in actual practice bring 
about the destruction of the race within at most a 
couple of generations; and such destruction 
would be heartily to be desired for any race of 
such infamous character as to tolerate such a 
system. 

“ Advanced ” Socialist leaders are fond of de- 
claiming against patriotism, of announcing their 
movement as international, and of claiming to 
treat all men alike. As regards patriotism their 
practice is generally as bad as their preaching; 
in this war the Socialist leaders have played the 
part of traitors to America, and many sincere 
men have in consequence left the Socialist party 
— although as so many of the Socialist leaders 
here are Germans, and as they have been warm 
upholders of every revolting act of the German 
autocracy, they may claim that their patriotism 
is merely inverted. But as regards real inter- 
nationalism, the Socialists would not for one mo- 
ment stand the test of actual experiment. If the 
leaders of the Socialist party in America should 
to-day endeavor to force their followers to admit 
all negroes and Chinamen to a real equality, their 
party would promptly disband, and rather than 
submit to such putting into effect of their avowed 
purpose, would, as a literal fact, follow any cap- 
italistic organization as an alternative. 

Jt is not accident that makes thoroughgoing 
and radical Socialists adopt the principles of free 


1916] SOCIALISM VS. SOCIAL REFORM 809 


love as a necessary sequence to insisting that no 
man shall have the right to what he earns. 
When Socialism of this really advanced and logi- 
cal type, or any social system really, although not 
nominally, akin to it, is tried as it was in France 
in 1792, and again under the Commune in 1871, 
it is inevitable that the movement, ushered in with 
every kind of high-sounding phrase, should rap- 
idly spread so as to include, not merely the forci- 
ble acquisition of the property of others, but 
every conceivable form of monetary corruption, 
immorality, licentiousness, and murderous vio- 
lence. In theory, distinctions can be drawn be- 
tween this kind of Socialism and anarchy and 
nihilism; but in practice, as in 1871, the apostles 
of all three act together; and if the doctrines of 
any of them could be applied universally, all the 
troubles of society would indeed cease, because 
society itself would cease. The poor and the 
helpless, especially women and children, would 
be the first to die out, and the few survivors 
would go back to the condition of skin-clad sav- 
ages, so that the whole painful and laborious 
work of social development would have to begin 
over again. Of course, long before such an 
event really happened the Socialistic régime 
would have been overturned, and in the reaction 
men would welcome any kind of one-man 
tyranny that was compatible with the existence of 
civilization. 

The fact is that this kind of Socialism repre~ 
sents an effort to enthrone privilege in its crudest 
form. Much of what we are fighting against in 
modern civilization is privilege. We fight 
against privilege when it takes the form of a 
franchise to a street railway company to enjoy 


810 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [May 


the use of the streets of a great city without pay- 
ing an adequate return; when it takes the form 
of a great business combination which grows 
rich by rebates which are denied to other ship- 
pers; when it takes the form of a stock-gambling 
operation which results in the watering of rail- 
way securities so that certain inside men get an 
enormous profit out of a swindle on the public. 
All these represent various forms of illegal, or, 
if not illegal, then anti-social, privilege. But 
there can be no greater abuse, no greater exam- 
ple of corrupt and destructive privilege, than that 
advocated by those who say that each man should 
put into a common store what he can and take 
out what he needs. This is merely another way 
of saying that the thriftless and the vicious, who 
could or would put in but little, should be entitled 
to take out the earnings of the intelligent, the 
foresighted, and the industrious. Such a proposi- 
tion is morally base. To choose to live by theft 
or by charity necessarily means the complete loss 
of self-respect. The worst wrongs that capital- 
ism can commit upon labor would sink into insig- 
nificance when compared with the hideous wrongs 
done by those who would degrade labor by en- 
tailing upon it the rapid lowering of self-reli- 
ance. 

However — and this we must say again, and 
again, and again—the fact that the professed 
socialists hold views that are on some points pro- 
foundly immoral, does not in the smallest degree 
excuse us from warring against existing evils. 
To fail to do so would rank us among the foes 
of this nation’s own household. And in thus 
watring, we must lose sight neither of our moral 
nor of our economic needs. 


1916] SOCIALISM VS. SOCIAL REFORM 811 


We should do everything that can be done, by 
law or otherwise, to keep the avenues of occupa- 
tion, of employment, of work, of interest, so open 
that there shall be, so far as it is humanly possi- 
ble to achieve it, a measurable equality of oppor- 
tunity ; an equality of opportunity for each man 
to show the stuff that is in him. We ought, as 
far as possible, to make it possible for each 
man to obtain the education, the training which 
will enable him to take advantage of the oppor- 
tunity, if he has the stuff in him to do so. 
When it comes to reward, let each man, within 
the limits set by a sound and far-sighted moral- 
ity, get what, by his energy, intelligence, thrift, 
courage, he is able to get, with the opportunity 
open. We must set our faces against privilege ; 
just as much against the kind of privilege which 
would let the shiftless and lazy laborer take 
what his brother has earned as against the 
privilege which allows the huge capitalist to take 
toll to which he is not entitled. We stand for 
equality of opportunity, but not for equality of 
reward unless there is also equality of service. 
If the service is equal, let the reward be equal; 
but let the reward depend on the service; and, 
mankind being composed as it is, there will be 
inequality of service for a long time to come, no 
matter how great the quality of opportunity may 
be; and just so long as there is inequality of 
service it is eminently desirable that there should 
be inequality of reward. 

We recognize, and are bound to war against, 
the evils of to-day. The remedies are partly 
economic and partly spiritual, partly to be ob- 
tained by laws, and in greater part to be obtained 
by individual and associated effort; for character 


812 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [May 


is the vital matter, and character cannot be cre- 
ated by law. These remedies include a religious 
and moral teaching which shall increase the spirit 
of human brotherhood; an educational system 
which shall train men for every form of useful 
service — and which shall train us to prize com- 
mon sense no less than morality; such a division 
of the profits of industry as shall tend to en- 
courage intelligent and thrifty tool-users to be- 
come tool-owners; and a Government so strong, 
just, wise, and democratic that, neither lagging 
too far behind nor pushing heedlessly in advance, 
it may do its full share in promoting these ends. 


THE FARMER; THE CORNER-STONE 
OF CIVILIZATION 


RECENTLY an Indiana woman was peeling some 
potatoes, and in a hollow in one she found a 
note from the Southern farmer who had raised 
the potatoes running: 

‘““T got 69c. a bushel for these potatoes. How 
much did you pay for them?” 

She wrote back: 

“T paid $4 per bushel.” 

The farmer sent her just one more letter. It 
said: 

“T got 69c. for those potatoes. It could not 
have cost more than 3Ic. to carry them to you. 
Who got the other $3? Iam going to try to find 
out.” 

It is idle to say that when such an occurrence 
is typical— and it most certainly is to a large 
extent typical — there is no cause for uneasiness. 
Something is wrong. It may be wholly the fault 


1916] THE FARMER AND CIVILIZATION 813 


of outsiders. It may be at least partially the 
fault of the farmers and of those who eat the 
food the farmers raise. The trouble may be so 
deep-rooted in our social system that extreme 
caution must be exercised in striving for better- 
ment. But one thing is certain. The situation 
is not satisfactory and calls for a thoroughgoing 
investigation, with the determination to make 
whatever changes, including radical changes, are 
necessary in order once more to put on a healthy 
basis the oldest and most essential of all occupa- 
tions, the occupation which is the foundation of 
all others, the occupation of the tiller of the soil, 
of the man who by his own labor raises the raw 
material of food and clothing, without which the 
whole fabric of the most gorgeous civilization will 
topple in a week. 

We cannot permanently shape our course right 
on any international issue unless we are sound 
on the domestic issues; and this farm movement 
is the fundamental social issue —the one issue 
which is even more basic than the relations of 
capitalist and workingman. The farm industry 
cannot stop; the world is never more than a year 
from starvation; this great war has immensely 
increased the cost of living without commensur- 
ately improving the condition of the men who 
produce the things on which we live. Even in 
this country the situation has become grave. 

The temporary causes of this situation have 
produced such effect in our land only because 
they aggravated conditions due to fundamental 
causes which have long been at work. These 
fundamental causes may all be included in one: 
the farmers’ business in our country has re- 
mained almost unchanged during the century 


814 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [May 


which has seen every other business change in 
profound and radical fashion. He still works 
by methods belonging to the day of the stage- 
coach and the horse canal-boat, while every other 
brain or hand worker in the country has been 
obliged to shape his methods into more or less 
conformity to those required by an age of steam 
and electricity. 

Our commercial, banking, manufacturing, and 
transportation systems have been built up with 
a rapidity never before approached. We have 
accumulated wealth at an unheard of rate. 
There has been grave injustice in the distribu- 
tion of the wealth, our law-givers having erred 
both by unwisdom in leaving the matter alone, 
and at times by even greater unwisdom when 
they interfered with it. But on the whole the 
growth and prosperity have been enormous ; and 
yet we have allowed the basic industry of farm- 
ing, the industry which underlies all economic 
life, to drift along haphazard, we have allowed 
the life of the dwellers in the open country to 
become more and more meager, and their methods 
of production and of marketing to remain so 
primitive that their soil was impoverished and 
their profits largely usurped by others. 

In 1880, one farmer in four was a tenant; and 
at that time the tenant was still generally a young 
man to whom the position of tenant was merely 
an intermediate step between that of farm laborer 
and that of farm owner. In IgI0, over one 
farmer in three had become a tenant; and now- 
adays it becomes steadily more difficult to pass 
from the tenant to the owner stage. If the proc- 
ess continues unchecked, half a century hence we 
shall have deliberately permitted ourselves to 


1916] THE FARMER AND CIVILIZATION 815 


plunge into the situation which brought chaos in 
Ireland, and which in England resulted in the 
complete elimination of the old yeomanry, so that 
nearly nine-tenths of English farmers to-day are 
tenants and the consequent class division is most 
ominous for the future. France and Germany 
are to-day distinctly better off than we are in this 
respect ; and in New Zealand, where there is an 
excellent system of land distribution, only one- 
seventh of the farmers are tenants. 

If the tendencies that have produced such a 
condition continue to work unchecked no pro- 
phetic power is needed to foretell disaster to the 
nation. Therefore, the one hopeless attitude, in 
this as in recent international matters, is “ watch- 
ful waiting,” sitting still and doing nothing to 
prepare for or to avert disaster. It is far better 
to try experiments, even when we are not cer- 
tain how these experiments will turn out, or when 
Wwe are certain that the proposed plan contains 
elements of folly as well as elements of wisdom. 
Better “trialand error” than no trial at all. And 
the service test, the test of actual experiment, is 
the only conclusive test. It is only the attempt 
in actual practice to realize a realizable ideal that 
contains hope. Mere writing and oratory and 
enunciation of theory, with no attempt to secure 
the service test, amount to nothing. 

This applies to the tenancy problem. It also 
applies to every other farming problem. As re- 
gards each, let us test the plans for reform, so 
far as may be, by actual practice. 

For many of these plans the several states 
offer themselves as natural laboratories, where 
experiments can be tried- when conditions and 
public opinion are right; and this although the 


816 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [May, 


permanent remedies must ultimately, at least in 
major part, be national. It is exceedingly inter- 
esting to watch such an experiment as that seem- 
ingly to be tried in North Dakota. This is a 
farming State, where the farming is the predom- 
inant interest, and inasmuch as all reforms cost 
money, and as even advisable reforms become 
utterly disastrous if in spending money upon 
them we treat “ the sky as the limit,” and decline 
to consider the proportion between what the re- 
form achieves and what it costs, it is well that the 
farmers themselves should pay a good proportion 
of the cost of reforms necessary to and peculiarly 
affecting themselves. In North Dakota, in addi- 
tion to matters like hail insurance, it is proposed 
that the State shall purchase and operate grain 
elevators, mills and terminals and other business 
instrumentalities of vital concern to farmers. I 
most heartily commend the earnest effort the lead- 
ers in the movement have made actually to better 
conditions; and I say this although from the 
facts at my command I judge that most of the 
work which it is thus proposed to have done by 
the State could be done better by cooperative 
societies among the farmers themselves. Present 
conditions should certainly be changed. To keep 
them unchanged is to act in a spirit of mere 
Toryism. From the North Dakota experiment, 
when put in actual practice, we can learn some 
things to follow and some things to avoid; and 
perhaps we can also learn to be wise in time, 
and, by sane determination to put in practice re- 
forms that we are reasonably sure will have no 
bad effects, avoid the sad necessity of paying 
with our own skins for experiments which prob- 
ably will have bad effects. 


1916] THE FARMER AND CIVILIZATION 817 


I greatly prefer to see the Government leave 
untouched whatever the corporations under Gov- 
ernment supervision can do; and just as far as 
possible I want to see all the corporations made 
into codperative associations. But there are 
things so important that the Government must 
do them, if it is only through such exercise of 
collective power that they can be done. 

Our cbject must be (1) to make the tenant 
farmer a landowner; (2) to eliminate as far as 
possible the conditions which produce the shift- 
ing, seasonal, tramp type of labor, and to give 
the farm laborer a permanent status, a career as 
a farmer, for which his school education shall 
fit him, and which shall open to him the chance 
of in the end earning the ownership in fee of his 
own farm; (3) to secure codperation among the 
small landowners, so that their energies shall 
produce the best possible results; (4) by pro- 
gressive taxation or in other fashion to break 
up and prevent the formation of great landed 
estates, especially in so far as they consist of 
unused agricultural land; (5) to make capital 
available for the farmers, and thereby put them 
more on an equality with other men engaged in 
business; (6) to care for the woman on the farm 
as much as for the man, and to eliminate the 
conditions which now so often tend to make her 
life one of gray and sterile drudgery; (7) to do 
this primarily through the farmer himself, but 
also, when necessary, by the use of the entire 
collective power of the people of the country ; for 
os welfare of the farmer is the concern of all 
oi us. 


818 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [May 


THE HUN WITHIN OUR GATES 


Tue Hun within our gates is the worst of the 
foes of our own household, whether he is the paid 
or the unpaid agent of Germany. Whether he is 
pro-German or poses as a pacifist, or a peace-at- 
any-price man, matters little. He is the enemy 
of the United States. Senators and Congressmen 
like Messrs. Stone, La Follette and Maclemore 
belong in Germany and it is a pity they cannot 
be sent there, as Vallandigham was sent to the 
hostile lines by Lincoln during the Civil War. 
Such men are among the worst of the foes of 
our own household; and so are the sham philan- 
thropists and sinister agitators and the wealthy 
creatures without patriotism who support and 
abet them. Our Government has seemed afraid 
to grapple with these people. It is permitting 
thousands of allies of Berlin to sow the seeds of 
treason and sedition in this country. The I. W. 
W. boasts its defiance of all law, and many of its 
members exultingly proclaim that in their war 
against industry in the United States they are en- 
deavoring to give the Government so much to do 
that it will have no troops to spare for Europe. 
Every district where the I. W. W. starts rioting 
should be placed under martial law, and cleaned 
up by military methods. The German-language 
papers carry on a consistent campaign in favor 
of Germany against England. They should be 
put out of existence for the period of this war. 
The Hearst papers, more ably edited than the 
German sheets, play the Kaiser’s game in a similar 
way. When they keep within the law they should 
at least be made to feel the scorn felt for them by 


1916] THE HUN WITHIN OUR GATES 819 


every honest American. Wherever any editor 
can be shown to be purveying treason in viola- 
tion of law he should be jailed until the conflict 
is over. Every disloyal German-born citizen 
should have his naturalization papers recalled and 
should be interned during the term of the war. 
Action of this kind is especially necessary in order 
to pick out the disloyal but vociferous minority 
of citizens of German descent from the vast but 
silent majority of entirely loyal citizens of Ger- 
man descent who otherwise will suffer from a 
public anger that will condemn all alike. Every 
disloyal native-born American should be disfran- 
chised and interned. It is time to strike our 
enemies at home heavily and quickly. Every cop- 
perhead in this country is an enemy to the Govy- 
ernment, to the people, to the army and to the 
flag, and should be treated as such. 

This pro-German, Anti-American propaganda 
has been carried on for years prior to the war, 
and its treasonable activities are performed sys- 
tematically to-day. The great majority of the 
men and women of German blood, are absolutely 
good Americans, and we owe it just as much to 
them as to the rest of our fellow countrymen 
with the utmost severity to suppress the tens of 
thousands of Germans and German-Americans 
who, having taken the oath of allegiance, yet in- 
trigue and conspire against the United States and 
do their utmost to promote the success of Ger- 
many and to weaken the defense of this nation. 
These men support and direct the pro-German 
societies. They incite disloyal activities among 
the Russian Jews. They finance the small groups 
of Irish-Americans whose hatred for England 
makes them traitors to the United States. They 


8200 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES {May 


foment seditious operations among the German- 
American socialists and the I. W. W.’s. They 
support the German-language periodicals. Their 
campaigns range from peace movements and anti- 
draft schemings to open efforts in a awak of sedi- 
tion and civil war. 

These traitors are following out the vicious 
teachings of Prussian philosophers; there is no 
cause for surprise at their treasonable course. 
Unfortunately there is cause for surprise at the 
license which the Administration extends to their 
detestable activities. In this attitude the Admin- 
istration is repeating its course of indifference to 
world-threatening aggression, ‘and of submission 
to studied acts of murderous violence, which re- 
sulted, after two and a half years of injury and 
humiliation, in our being dragged unprepared into 
war. 

If during those two and a half years a policy 
of courage, and of consistent and far-sighted 
Americanism, had been followed, either the brutal 
invasion of our national rights would have been 
checked without war or else if we had been forced 
into war we would have brought it instantly to a 
victorious end. Our failure to prepare is re- 
sponsible for our failure now efficiently to act in 
the war. In exactly the same fashion it may be 
set down as certain that continuance of the pres- 
ent craven policy of ignoring sedition and palter- 
ing with treason will encourage and aid German 
autocracy, and will be translated either into ter- 
rible lists of Americans slain and crippled on the 
battlefield or else into an ignoble peace which will 
leave Germany free at some future time to resume 
its campaign against America and against liberty- 
loving mankind. 


1917] BE WISE IN TIME 821 


NINE-TENTHS OF WISDOM IS BEING 
WISE IN TIME 


A SPEECH DELIVERED AT LINCOLN, NEBRASKA, 
JUNE 14, 1917 


In the past there have been two great crises in 
our national life: that in which the infant nation 
was saved by the soldierly valor and single- 
minded statesmanship of Washington, and that in 
which, in its raw maturity, the nation was again 
saved by the men who followed Lincoln and 
Grant. In each case the victory was followed 
by over half a century of national unity, secured 
by the peace of victory; and during this peace, 
brought by the victory of righteousness, men for- 
got that all its benefits would be lost if it were 
turned into the peace of cowardice and slack- 
ness. The Revolution was a war for liberty ; and 
that liberty became of permanent value only 
when, again under Washington’s lead, it was made 
secure by the orderly strength of the Union. The 
liberty secured in the Civil War to the black man 
was thus secured only because the white man was 
willing to fight to the death for the Union, and for 
the flag to which we owe undivided allegiance. 

The old thirteen States were born of the Revo- 
lution. Nebraska, like Kansas, was born of the 
Civil War. It was the struggle over the admis- 
sion to statehood of Kansas and Nebraska which 
marked tht real opening of the contest that cul- 
minated at Appomattox. 

The contest settled three great principles: 

1. That we were no longer to make words sub- 
stitutes for facts, or accept fine phrases in lieu 


822 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [June 


of great deeds; and that therefore we were to 
make our devotion to liberty a fact instead of'a 
phrase by abolishing slavery. 

2. That we were all hereafter to be Americans 
with an undivided allegiance to the flag of the 
Union ; an allegiance even more incompatible with 
a loyalty divided between our flag and some for- 
eign flag than with a loyalty divided between the 
whole country and some section of the country. 

3. That we were definitely to realize that while 
peace was normally a good thing, yet that right- 
eousness stood above peace, and that the only 
good citizens were those who were sternly ready 
to face war rather than submit to an unrighteous 
or cowardly peace. 

All these principles are at stake at the present 
moment. All three have been threatened, and 
therefore the honor and the welfare and the use- 
fulness and, indeed, the very life of the Republic 
have been threatened by the pacifist and pro- 
German agitation of the last three years. 

Our national record during these three years is 
not one to which we can look back with pride; 
for during these three years we violated the three 
principles established by the Civil War. 

1. For two years and a half we used fine 
phrases to cover ugly facts, when we unctuously 
protested our devotion to the liberties of small, 
well-behaved nations in the abstract, and yet, in 
the concrete did not say one word of indignant 
protest when with ruthless brutality, and without 
one shadow of moral justification, Germany con- 
quered and enslaved Belgium. We did not even 
dare to act when our own innocent women and 
children and unarmed men lost their lives on the 
high seas, and when their murder was insolently 


1917] | BE WISE IN TIME 823 


justified by the tyrannous Prussianized autocracy 
which now menaces the entire peace-loving and 
liberty-loving world. 

2. We permitted our national policy to be 
swayed by the national devotions and national 
antipathies of men who exercised the rights of 
American citizens but who showed themselves 
traitors to America by the way in which they 
prostituted our citizenship to the interests of 
Germany, or to their hatred of England; men 
whose allegiance to this country was merely one 
of the lips, while in their hearts their loyalty was 
wholly given to Germany, or else to any and every 
enemy of England, even although that enemy was 
also an enemy of the United States and of man- 
kind. Such disloyalty was quite as mischievous 
as, and far less excusable than, sectional dis- 
loyalty. 

3. It would be impossible to overstate the dam- 
age done to the moral fiber of our country by the 
professional pacifist propaganda, the peace-at- 
any-price propaganda, which had been growing in 
strength for the previous decade and which for 
the first two and a half years of the war was 
potent in influencing us as a people to play a part 
which was wholly unworthy of the teachings of 
the great men of our past. The professional 
pacifist movement was heavily financed by certain 
big capitalists. This was not merely admitted but 
blazoned abroad by some among them; whereas 
the accusations that the munition makers or any 
other interested persons, played any important 
part in the movement for preparedness were mali- 
cious falsehoods, well known to be such by those 
who uttered them. The professional pacifists 
during these two and a half years have occupied 


824 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [June 


precisely the position of the copperheads during 
the time of Abraham Lincoln. 

We now pay the same tribute of respect to the 
men who fought for their convictions in the Civil 
War, whether they wore the blue or the gray — 
kinsmen of mine were in the Union army, and 
other kinsmen of mine in the Confederate army, 
and I am equally proud of both. But nobody is 
proud of the copperheads, who exalted peace 
above righteousness ; and the professional pacifists 
of to-day are their spiritual heirs. 

At last, thank Heaven, we came to our senses, 
realized our shortcomings, and tardily did our 
duty. At last we spurned the mean counsels of 
timidity and folly. At last we showed that we 
were not too proud to fight ; and we have reversed 
and repudiated the mean and base proposal to 
secure peace without victory. At last we took 
up the challenge which Germany had, with equal 
brutality and contempt, so often hurled in our 
faces. At last we determined to make our loyalty 
to this nation’s past and to the welfare of human- 
ity, a matter of deeds and not merely of empty 
words. We have entered the great war for the 
future of civilization ; and now that we are at war 
it behooves us to bear ourselves like men. 

Weare utterly unprepared. The things we are 
now doing, even when well done, are things which 
we ought to have begun doing three’ years ago. 
We can now only partially offset our folly in fail- 
ing to prepare doing these last three years, in 
failing to heed the lesson writ large across the 
skies in letters of flame and blood. Nine-tenths 
of wisdom consists in being wise in time! Now 
‘we must fight without proper preparation. But 
Wwe must prepare as well as we can_at this late 


1917] BE WISE IN TIME 825 


date ; and the most important of all forms of pre- 
paredness is spiritual preparedness. 

First of all we must sternly insist that all our 
people practice the patriotism of service, and that 
we all give a fervid and undivided loyalty to our 
common country. Patriotism is an affair of 
deeds, and patriotic words are good only in so far 
as they result in deeds. If phrase-making and 
oratory, whether by public servants or by out- 
siders, are treated as substitutes for deeds, the 
result is unmixed mischief. We read Lincoln’s 
Gettysburg speech and Second Inaugural, only 
because his words were made good by his deeds, 
only because he threw aside all considerations 
other than the welfare of the nation, and with 
steadfast efficiency fought to the end for freedom 
and for the preservation of the Union. 

As it was with that very great man in the past, 
so it must be with us lesser men in the present. 
Unless we now, at this moment, in this war, 
strive each of us to serve the country according 
to our several abilities, we are false to the mem- 
ories of the nation-builders to whose sagacity and 
prowess we owe the creation of this state fifty 
years ago. Nebraska was founded as a State of 
the Union only because there were in the nation 
at that time enough men who were willing to do 
and dare and die at need for the Union. To-day, 
likewise, the instant and overwhelming need of 
the nation is for men who will serve in arms, and 
if necessary die, for the nation; and next to this 
is the need for the men and women who will put 
our entire industrial and agricultural strength 
back of the fighting men in the field. Only the 
men and women who do this are true patriots; 
for patriotism means service to the nation; and 


826 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [June 


only those who render such service are fit to enjoy 
the privilege of citizenship. 

We cannot render such service if our loyalty 
is in even the smallest degree divided between 
this and any other nation. There must be no 
division within our own ranks along the lines of 
creed or national origin; and any citizen of this 
country who uses his citizenship in the interest of 
some other country is a traitor to the United 
States. It is not merely our right, but our high 
duty, to insist on this fact. Twice over a century 
ago we fought Great Britain. In each contest 
the great majority of the citizens of British de- 
scent took the lead and proved that they were 
Americans and nothing else. Those who did not 
so act were traitors. Now we are at war with 
Germany; and every citizen of German blood is 
bound in this contest to show the same whole- 
hearted Americanism in support of the United 
States against Germany that was shown in 1776 
and 1812 by the Americans of British descent in 
the contests with Great Britain. To act other- 
wise is to be guilty of treason. 

In the Revolutionary War the British armies 
who strove against our liberties were aided by 
powerful bodies of German auxiliaries. One of 
Washington’s most famous victories, that at Tren- 
ton, was gained purely over Germans; and his 
first military experience was against the French. 
But it would be unworthy folly now to inveigh 
against Germany because a hundred and forty 
years ago she furnished mercenary troops for our 
subjugation ; or to inveigh against the French be- 
cause they were the bitter foes of our people in 
colonial days. It was precisely as unworthy, pre- 
cisely as silly and wicked, now to nourish hatred 


1017] BE WISE IN TIME 827 


against England. Washington’s troops included 
men of English and Irish, of German and French, 
blood. But they were Americans and nothing 
else! They did nct ask whether they were to 
fight English, French, or Germans. They fought 
the foes of the American flag, whoever these foes 
might be. 

This must be our spirit to-day. We are a dif- 
ferent people from any people of Europe. It is 
our boast that we admit the immigrant to full 
fellowship and equality with the native born. In 
return we demand that he shall share our undi- 
vided allegiance to the one flag which floats over 
all of us. The events of the last few years have 
conclusively shown that the man, whether of Ger- 
man, or of any other origin, who attempts to 
combine allegiance to this country with allegiance 
to another, is necessarily false to this country. 

In this country we must have but one flag, the 
American flag; but one language, the English 
language; and above all, but one loyalty, an ex- 
clusive and undivided loyalty to the United States, 
with no Lot’s wife attitude, no looking back to 
the various Old World countries from which our 
ancestors have severally come. 

Now for the lesson of preparedness — military 
and economic, spiritual and material. As yet, 
nearly five months after Germany declared war 
on us, we have not so much as a division of troops 
ready for action. As yet we are utterly helpless 
to act in our own defense. The fault lies pri- 
marily in our complete failure to prepare during 
the last three years since the great war opened. 
Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time! 
We have not been wise in time; and now we rely 
on our allies to protect us from the effect of our 


828 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [June 


folly. Just think of what Germany would have 
done to us within the first month — not to speak 
of the first four months —after we broke off 
diplomatic relations with her if we had not been 
able to shield our feeble and short-sighted un- 
readiness behind the navy of Great Britain and 
the armies of the allies. We owe our ignoble 
safety to the British fleet, and the French and 
English armies. We escape paying an utterly 
ruinous payment for our folly only because the 
soldiers and sailors of our allies pay for it with 
their lives. Uncle Sam is in the undignified posi- 
tion of the man who gets on a street car and then 
fumbles in his pocket while somebody else pays 
his fare. 

If we had been willing to prepare, and if we 
had showed that we meant what we said, we 
would probably have prevented the war, and 
would certainly have brought it to a close as soon 
as we entered it. Now, friends, there is no use 
crying over spilt milk. But it is even worse to 
make believe that the milk was not spilt. The 
important thing is to face the fact of the spilling 
and resolve that it shall not be spilt again. Let 
us act in the spirit of the words of Abraham Lin- 
coln at the close of the Civil War: “ Human 
nature will not change. In any future great na- 
tional trial, compared with the men of this, we 
shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as 
wise, as bad and as good. Let us therefore study 
the incidents of this as philosophy to learn wis- 
dom from, and none of them as wrongs to be 
revenged.”” Let us manfully acknowledge how 
great have been our shortcomings for the last 
few years, and then let us, without a particle of 
tevengeful or recriminatory or uncharitable feel- 


1917] FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR PART 829 


ing, learn from them wisdom to be applied in our 
future conduct. From this time on let us insist 
on an absolute and undivided Americanism in this 
land, untempered by any half allegiance to the 
countries from which our ancestors may severally 
have sprung, and untainted by any unworthy na- 
tional animosity towards any other country. Let 
us prepare ourselves spiritually, economically, and 
in all military and naval matters — including as 
a permanent policy the policy of universal military 
training and service —so that never again shall 
we be utterly unready, as we now are, to meet a 
great crisis. Finally, in the present war, a war 
for liberty and democracy against the ruthless 
militaristic tyranny of the Prussianized Germany 
of the Hohenzollerns, let us as speedily as pos- 
sible train our giant, but our soft and unready, 
strength, so that we may use our hardened might 
to bring the slaughter to an end in the only way 
honorably possible, by securing for ourselves and 
our allies the peace of justice based on over- 
whelming victory. 


FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN 
BART 


Fear God; and take your own part! Fear 
God, in the true sense of the word, means love 
God, respect God, honor God; and all of this can 
only be done by loving our neighbor, treating him . 
justily and mercifully, and in all ways endeavor- 
ing to protect him from injustice and cruelty; 
thus obeying, as far as our human frailty will 
permit, the great and immutable law of righteous- 
ness. 


830 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [June 


We fear God when we do justice to and de- 
mand justice for the men within our own bor- 
ders. Weare false to the teachings of righteous- 
ness if we do not do such justice and demand 
such justice. We must do it to the weak, and we 
must do it to the strong. We do not fear God 
if we show mean envy and hatred of those who 
are better off than we are; and still less do we 
fear God if we show a base arrogance towards 
and selfish lack of consideration for those who 
are less well off. We must apply the same stand- 
ard of conduct alike to man and to woman, to 
rich man and to poor man, to employer and em- 
ployee. We must organize our social and indus- 
trial life so as to secure a reasonable equality of 
opportunity for all men to show the stuff that is 
in them, and a reasonable division among those 
engaged in industrial work of the reward for 
that industrial work, a division which shall take 
into account all the qualities that contribute to 
the necessary success. We must demand hon- 
esty, justice, mercy, truthfulness, in our dealings 
with one another within our own borders. Out- 
side of our own borders we must treat other na- 
tions as we would wish to be treated in return, 
judging each in any given crisis as we ourselves 
ought to be judged — that is, by our conduct in 
that crisis. If they do ill, we show that we fear 
God when we sternly bear testimony against them 
and oppose them in any way and to whatever ex- 
tent the needs require. If they do well, we must 
not wrong them ourselves. Finally, if we are 
really devoted to a lofty ideal we must in so far 
as our strength permits aid them if they are 
wronged by others. When we sit idly by while 
Belgium is being overwhelmed, and rolling up our 


1917] FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR PART 831 


eyes prattle with unctuous self-righteousness 
about “the duty of neutrality,” we show that we 
do not really fear God; on the contrary, we show 
an odious fear of the devil, and a mean readiness 
to serve him. 

But in addition to fearing God, it is necessary 
that we should be able and ready to take our own 
part. The man who cannot take his own part 
is a nuisance in the community, a source of weak- 
ness, an encouragement to wrongdoers and an 
added burden to the men who wish to do what is 
right. If he cannot take his own part, then some- 
body else has to take it for him; and this means 
that his weakness and cowardice and inefficiency 
place an added burden on some other man and 
make that other man’s strength by just so much 
of less avail to the community as a whole. No 
man can take the part of any one else unless he 
is able to take his own part. This is just as true 
of nations as of men. A nation that cannot take 
its own part is at times almost as fertile a source 
of mischief in the world at large as is a nation 
which does wrong to others, for its very existence 
puts a premium on such wrongdoing. Therefore, 
a nation must fit itself to defend its honor and 
interest against outside aggression ; and this neces- 
sarily means that in a free democracy every man 
fit for citizenship must be trained so that he can 
do his full duty to the nation in war no less than 
in peace. 

Unless we are thorough-going Americans and 
unless our patriotism is part of the very fiber 
of our being, we can neither serve God nor take 
our own part. Whatever may be the case in an 
infinitely remote future, at present no people can 
render any service to humanity unless as a people 


832 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [June 


they feel an intense sense of national cohesion 
and solidarity. The man who loves other na- 
tions as much as he does his own, stands on a par 
with the man who loves other women as much as 
he does his own wife. The United States can ac- 
complish little for mankind, save in so far as 
within its borders it develops an intense spirit of 
Americanism. A flabby cosmopolitanism, es- 
pecially if it expresses itself through a flabby pa= 
cifism, is not only silly, but degrading. It repre- 
sents national emasculation. The professors of 
every form of hyphenated Americanism are as 
truly the foes of this country as if they dwelled 
outside its borders and made active war against 
it. This is not a figure of speech, or a hyperbolic 
statement. The leaders of the hyphenated- 
American movement in this country (who dur- 
ing the last eighteen months have been the pro- 
fessional German-Americans and Austro-Ameri- 
cans) are also leaders in the movement against 
preparedness. I have before me a little pamphlet, 
circulated by a “ German-American” organiza- 
tion, consisting of articles written by a German- 
American for a paper which claims to be the lead- 
ing German paper in Illinois. This pamphlet is 
a bitter attack upon the policy of preparedness 
for the United States, and a slanderous assault 
on those advocating this American policy. It is, 
therefore, an effort tn the interest of Germany 
to turn the United States into a larger Belgium — 
an easy prey for Germany whenever Germany 
desires to seize it. These professional German- 
Americans and Pro-Germans are Anti-American 
to the core. They play the part of traitors, pure 
and simple. Once it was true that this country 
could not endure half free and half slave. To- 


1917] FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR PART 833 


day it is true that it can not endure half Ameri- 
can and half foreign. The hyphen is incompati- 
ble with patriotism. 

Patriotism should be an integral part of our 
every feeling at all times, for it is merely another 
name for those qualities of soul which make a 
man in peace or in war, by day or by night, think 
of his duty to his fellows, and of his duty to the 
nation through which their and his loftiest aspira- 
tions must find their fitting expression. After 
the Lusitania was sunk, Mr. Wilson stated in 
effect that such a time was not the right time 
to stir up patriotism. This statement is entirely 
incompatible with having a feeling of deep pa- 
triotism at any time. It might just as appropri- 
ately have been made by George Washington im- 
mediately after his defeat at the Brandywine, 
or by Abraham Lincoln immediately after the 
surrender of Fort Sumter; and if in either of 
these crises our leaders had acted on any such 
Principle we would not now have any country at 
all. Patriotism is as much a duty in time of war 
as in time of peace, and it is most of all a duty 
in any and every great crisis. To commit folly 
or do evil, to act inconsiderately and hastily or 
wantonly and viciously, in the name of patriot- 
ism, represents not patriotism at all, but a use of 
the name to cloak an attack upon the thing. Such 
baseness or folly is wrong, at every time and on 
every occasion. But patriotism itself is not only 
in place on every occasion and at every time, but 
is’ peculiarly the feeling which should be stirred 
to its deepest depths at every serious crisis. The 
duty of a leader is to lead; and it is a dreadful 
thing that any man chosen to lead his fellow- 
countrymen should himself show, not merely so 


834 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [June 


profound a lack of patriotism, but such misun- 
derstanding of patriotism, as to be willing to say 
in a great crisis what President Wilson thus said 
at the time of the sinking of the Lusitania. This 
statement, coupled with his statement made about 
the same time as to being “too proud to fight,” 
furnishes the clue to the Administration’s policy 
both before and since. This policy made our 
great democratic commonwealth false to its duties 
and its ideals in a tremendous world crisis, at 
the very time when, if properly led, it could have 
rendered an inestimable service to all mankind, 
and could have placed itself on a higher pinnacle 
of worthy achievement than ever before. 
Patriotism, so far from being incompatible with 
performance of duty to other nations, is an indis- 
pensable prerequisite to doing one’s duty toward 
other nations. Fear God; and take your own 
part! If this nation had feared God it would 
have stood up for the Belgians and Armenians ; 
if it had been able and willing to take its own 
part there would have been no murderous assault 
on the Lusitania, no outrages on our men and 
women in Mexico. True patriotism carries with 
it not hostility to other nations but a quickened 
sense of responsible good-will towards other na- 
tions, a good-will of acts and not merely of words. 
I stand for a nationalism of duty, to oneself and 
to others ; and, therefore, for a nationalism which 
is a means to internationalism. World peace 
must rest on the willingness of nations with cour- 
age, cool foresight, and readiness for self-sacri- 
fice to defend the fabric of international law. No 
nation can help in securing an organized, peaceful 
and justice-doing world community until it is 


1917] FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR PART 835 


willing to run risks and make efforts in order to 
secure and maintain such a community. 

The nation that in actual practice fears God 
is the nation which does not wrong its neighbors, 
which does so far as possible help its neighbors, 
and which never promises what it cannot do or 
will not or ought not to perform. The profes- 
sional pacifists in and out of office who at peace 
congresses pass silly resolutions which cannot be, 
and ought not to be, lived up to, and enter into 
silly treaties which ought not to be, and cannot 
be, kept, are not serving God, but Baal. They 
are not doing anything for anybody. If in addi- 
tion these people, when the concrete case arises, 
as in Belgium or Armenia, fear concretely to de- 
mounce and antagonize the wrongdoer, they be- 
come not merely passive, but active agents of 
the devil. The professional pacifists who ap- 
plauded universal arbitration treaties and disar- 
mament proposals prior to the war, since the war 
have held meetings and parades in this country 
on behalf of peace, and have gone on silly mis- 
sions to Europe on behalf of peace —and the 
peace they sought to impose on heroes who were 
battling against infamy was a peace conceived in 
the interest of the authors of the infamy. They 
did not dare to say that they stood only for a 
peace that should right the wrongs of Belgium. 
They did not dare to denounce the war of aggres- 
sion by Germany against Belgium. Their souls 
were too small, their timidity too great. They 
were even afraid to applaud the war waged by 
Belgium in its own defense. These pacifists have 
served morality, have shown that they feared 
God, exactly as the Pharisees did, when they 


836 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [June 


made broad their philacteries and uttered long 
prayers in public, but did not lift a finger to 
lighten the load of the oppressed. When Mr. 
Wilson and Mr. Bryan made this nation shirk 
its duty towards Belgium, they made us false to 
all our high ideals; for they acted and caused 
this government to act in that spirit of commer- 
cial opportunism which refuses to do duty to oth- 
ers unless there is in it pecuniary profit for one- 
self. This combination of mean timidity and 
mean commercial opportunism is peculiarly odi- 
ous because those practicing it have sought to 
hide it by profuse outbursts of wordy sentimen- 
tality and loud professions of attachment to im- 
possible and undesirable ideals. One of the be- 
setting sins of many of our public servants (and 
of not a few of our professional moralists, lay 
and clerical) is to cloak weakness or baseness of 
action behind insincere oratory on behalf of im- 
practical ideals. The true servant of the people 
is the man who preaches realizable ideals; and 
who then practices what he has preached. 
Moreover, even as regards the pacifists who 
genuinely desire that this nation should fear God, 
it is to be remembered that if the nation cannot 
take its own part, the fact that it fears God will 
be of no practical consequence to any one. No- 
body cares whether or not the feeling of the Chi- 
nese people is against international wrongdoing; 
for, as China is helplessly unable to take her own 
part, she is in practice even more heioless to take 
the part of any one else and to secure justice 
and mercy for any one else. The pacifists who 
are seeking to Chinafy the United States are 
not only seeking to bring the United States to 
ruin, but are also seeking to render it abso- 


1917] FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR PART 837 


lutely impotent to help upright and well-behaved 
nations which are oppressed by the military power 
of unscrupulous neighbors of greater strength. 

The professional pacifists, the leaders in the 
pacifist movement in the United States, do par- 
ticular harm by giving well-meaning but unin- 
formed people who do not think deeply what 
seems to them a convincing excuse for failure 
to show courage and resolution. Those who 
preach sloth and cowardice under the high- 
sounding name of “ peace” give people a word 
with which to cloak, even to themselves, their 
failure to perform unpleasant duty. For a man 
to stand up for his own rights, or especially for 
the rights of somebody else, means that he must 
have virile qualities; courage, foresight, willing- 
ness to face risk and undergo effort. It is much 
easier to be timid and lazy. The average man 
does not like to face death and endure hard- 
ship and labor. He can be roused to do so if 
a leader of the right type, a Wasington or 
Lincoln, appeals to the higher qualities, includ- 
ing the stern qualities, of his soul. But a leader, 
or at least a man who holds a leader’s place, 
earns praise and profit unworthily if he uses his 
gift of words to lull well-meaning men to sleep, 
if he assures them that it is their duty to do 
the easy and selfish thing, and furnishes them 
high-sounding phrases with which to cover 
ignoble failure to perform hard and disagreeable 
duties. 

Peace is not the end. Righteousness is the 
end. When the Savior saw the money-changers 
in the Temple he broke the peace by driving 
them out. At that moment peace could have 
been obtained readily enough by the simple proc- 


838 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [June 


ess of keeping quiet in the presence of wrong. 
But instead of preserving peace at the expense 
of righteousness, the Savior armed himself with 
a scourge of cords and drove the money-changers 
from the Temple. Righteousness is the end, and 
peace a means to the end, and sometimes it is not 
peace, but war which is the proper means to 
achieve the end. Righteousness should breed 
valor and strength. When it does breed them, it 
is triumphant; and when triumphant, it necessa- 
rily brings peace. But peace does not necessarily 
bring righteousness. 

Let this nation fear God and take its own part. 
Let it scorn to do wrong to great or small. Let 
it exercise patience and “charity toward all other 
peoples, and yet at whatever cost unflinchingly 
stand for the right when the right is menaced 
by the might which backs wrong. Let it further- 
more remember that the only way in which suc- 
cessfully to oppose wrong which is backed by 
might is to put over against it right which is 
backed by might. Wanton or unjust war is an 
abhorrent evil. But there are even worse evils. 
Until, as a nation, we learn to put honor and 
duty above safety, and to encounter any hazard 
with stern joy rather than fail in our obliga- 
tions to ourselves and others, it is mere folly 
to talk of entering into leagues for world peace 
or into any other movement of like character. 
The only kind of peace worth having is the peace 
of righteousness and justice ; the only nation that 
can serve other nations is the strong and valiant 
nation; and the only great international policies 
worth considering are those whose upholders be- 
lieve in them strongly enough to fight for them. 
The Monroe Doctrine is as strong as the United 


1917] FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR PART ‘839 


States navy, and no stronger. A nation is ut- 
terly contemptible if it will not fight in its own 
defense. A nation is not wholly admirable un- 
less in time of stress it will go to war for a great 
ideal wholly unconnected with its immediate ma- 
terial interest. 

Let us prepare not merely in military matters, 
but in our social and industrial life. There can 
be no sound relationship toward other nations 
unless there is also sound relationship among our 
own citizens within our own ranks. Let us in- 
sist on the thorough Americanization of the new- 
comers to our shores, and let us also insist on 
the thorough Americanization of ourselves. Let 
us encourage the fullest industrial activity, and 
give the amplest industrial reward to those whose 
activities are most important for securing indus- 
trial success, and at the same time let us see 
that justice is done and wisdom shown in secur- 
ing the welfare of every man, woman, and child 
within our borders. Finally, let us remember 
that we can do nothing to help other peoples, and 
nothing permanently to secure material well- 
being and social justice within our own borders, 
unless we feel with all our hearts devotion to this 
country, unless we are Americans and nothing 
else, and unless in time of peace by universal 
military training, by insistence upon the obliga- 
tions of every man and every woman to serve the 
commonwealth both in peace and war, and, above 
all, by a high and fine preparedness of soul and 
spirit, we fit ourselves to hold our own against all 
possible aggression from without. 

We are the citizens of a mighty Republic con- 
secrated to the service of God above, through the 
service of man on this earth. We are the heirs 


840 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [June 


of a great heritage bequeathed to us by statesmen 
who saw with the eyes of the seer and the prophet. 
We must not prove false to the memories of the 
nation’s past. We must not prove false to the fa- 
thers from whose loins we sprang, and to their 
fathers, the stern men who dared greatly and 
risked all things that freedom should hold aloft an 
undimmed torch in this wide land. They held 
their worldly well-being as dust in the balance 
when weighed against their sense of high duty, 
their fealty to lofty ideals. Let us show our- 
selves worthy to be their sons. Let us care, as is 
right, for the things of the body; but let us show 
that we care even more for the things of the soul. 
Stout of heart, and pledged to the valor of right- 
eousness, let us stand four-square to the winds of 
destiny, from whatever corner of the world they 
blow. Let us keep untarnished, unstained, the 
honor of the flag our fathers bore aloft in the 
_ teeth of the wildest storm, the flag that shall float 
above the solid files of a united people, a people 
sworn to the great cause of liberty and of justice, 
for themselves, and for all the sons and daughters 
of men. 


UNCLE SAM’S ONLY FRIEND IS UNCLE 
SAM 


Over forty years ago Charles Dickens wrote 
as follows of the United States: 

“Tn these times in which I write it is honor- 
ably remarkable for protecting its subjects wher- 
ever they may travel with a dignity and a determi- 
nation which is a model for England.” Ulysses 
Grant was then President of the United States. 


1917] UNCLE SAM’S ONLY FRIEND 841 


Like Washington and Linclon and Andrew Jack- 
son, he was an American who was not too proud 
to fight. Those of my countrymen who are still 
faithful to the old American tradition cannot but 
feel with bitter shame the bitter contrast between 
the conditions Charles Dickens thus described and 
the conditions at the present moment. 

The policy of watchful waiting, a policy popu- 
lar among governmental chiefs of a certain type 
ever since the days of Ethelred the Unready and 
for thousands of years anterior to that not wholly 
fortunate rule, has failed, as of course it always 
does fail in the presence of serious difficulty and 
of a resolute and ruthless foe. We have tried 
every possible expedient save only the application 
of wisdom and resolution. It has been said that 
we have not tried war; but this statement can be 
made only by those who are inexact in their ter- 
minology. Of course, if any one’s feelings are 
soothed by saying that when we took Vera Cruz, 
suffered a loss of a hundred and twenty men 
killed and wounded and in return killed and 
wounded several hundred Mexicans, we were 
Waging peace and not waging war, why there is 
no particular objection to this individual gaining 
whatever comfort is afforded by using words 
which misdescribe facts. But this is all the 
comfort he can gain. As a natural result 
of the impression created on foreigners by 
our conduct in Mexico, we were forced to hostile 
action in Haiti and a number of our men and 
our opponents were killed and wounded. Appar- 
ently we “ waged peace” in Haiti, much as we 
“waged peace ” in Mexico —and in Mexico the 
end of the war or peace or whatever it was that 
we waged was that we withdrew without getting 


842 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [June 


the result which our Government had announced 
that it would get when it took Vera Cruz. 

We of the United States have had a twofold 
duty imposed on us during the last year. We 
have owed a duty to ourselves. We have owed 
a duty to others. We have failed in both. Pri- 
marily both failures are due to the mischievous 
effects of the professional pacifist agitation which 
became governmental nearly five years ago when 
the then Administration at Washington sought 
to negotiate various all-inclusive arbitration trea- 
ties under which we abandoned the right to stand 
up for our own vital interest and national honor. 
Very reluctantly we who believe in peace, but in 
the peace of righteousness, have been forced to 
the conclusion that the most prominent leaders of 
the peace agitation of the past ten years in this 
country, so far as they have accomplished any- 
thing that was not purely fatuous, have accom- 
plished nothing but mischief. This result of the 
activities of these professional pacifist agitators 
has been due mainly to the fact that they have 
consistently placed peace ahead of righteousness, 
and have absolutely refused to look facts in the 
face if they thought the facts were unpleasant. 

It is as foolish to ignore common sense in this 
matter as in any other matter. It is as wicked 
to exalt peace at the expense of morality as it 
is to exalt war at the expense of morality. The 
greatest service that Lincoln rendered to the 
cause of permanent peace to the greater cause 
of justice and of righteousness was rendered 
by him when, with unshaken firmness, he 
accepted four years of grinding warfare rather 
than yield to the professional pacifists of his day 
— the Copperheads. Washington’s greatest serv- 


1917] UNCLE SAM’S ONLY FRIEND 843 


ice to peace was rendered by similar action on his 
part. And be it remembered that never in history 
have two men rendered greater service to the 
only kind of peace worth having for honorable 
men and women than was rendered by these two 
heroes who did not shrink from righteous war. 

Failure to perform duty to others is merely 
aggravated by failure to perform duty to our- 
selves. To pay twenty-five million dollars black- 
mail to Colombia does not atone for our timid 
refusal to do our duty by Belgium. It merely 
aggravates it. Moreover, it should always be 
remembered that in these matters the weak can- 
not be helped by the weak; that the brutal wrong- 
doer cannot be checked by the coward or by the 
fat, boastful, soft creature who does not take the 

trouble to make himself fit to enforce his words 

by his deeds. Preparedness means forethought, 
effort, trouble, labor. Therefore soft men, self- 
ish, indolent men, men absorbed in money-getting, 
and the great mass of well-meaning men who 
shrink from performing the new duties created 
by new needs, eagerly welcome a political leader 
who will comfort them, and relieve their secret 
sense of shame, by using high-sounding names to 
describe their shortcomings. 

An adroit politician can unquestionably gain 
many votes in such fashion, if he exalts unpre- 
paredness as a duty, if he praises peace and ad- 
vocates neutrality, as both in themselves moral 
—even although the “ peace” and “ neutrality ” 
may be conditioned on the failure to do our duty 
either to others or to ourselves. Such a politi- 
cian, if he excels in the use of high-sounding 
words, may win votes and gain office by thus 
pandering to men who wish to hear their selfish- 


844 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [June 


ness, their short-sightedness or their timidity 
exalted into virtues. But he is sapping the moral 
vitality of the people whom he misleads. 

It has been an evil thing that this nation, 
which for five years has been strutting as the 
champion of peace and holding conferences to 
denounce war and praising its wealthy citizens 
for founding peace leagues, has contented itself 
with these futile activities and has not dared to 
strike a blow, has not dared even to say a word 
for righteousness in the concrete, while wrong 
has been at least temporarily triumphant during 
the past eighteen months. It is an even worse 
thing that during this last eighteen months we 
have wholly failed to prepare to defend our own 
homes from disaster. 

Nor can we, the people of the United States, 
escape blame for ourselves by putting it upon 
our public servants. Unquestionably the Admin- 
istration has been guilty of culpable indifference 
to the honor and the interest of the nation dur- 
ing the last year and a half; but it has been guilty 
in this fashion precisely because it could count 
upon popular support; and therefore the ulti- 
mate blame rests on the people, that is, on us. 
It may well be that political gain will come to 
the politicians who appeal to what is selfish and 
timid in the hearts of our people, and who com- 
fort soft self-indulgence by praising it as virtu- 
ous. 

The events of the last year have shown that 
all who believed that the most frightful wrong- 
doing by warlike nations could be averted by the 
opinion of civilized mankind as a whole have 
been utterly in error. What is happening in this 
year 1916 shows that not the slightest particle 


1917] UNCLE SAM’S ONLY FRIEND 845 


of advance in international morality has been 
made during the century that has elapsed since 
the close of the Napoleonic wars. This failure 
is quite as much due to the misconduct of the 
pacifists as to the misconduct of the militarists. 
The milk-and-water statesmanship of the Amer- 
ican Government during the past year has been a 
direct aid to the statesmanship of blood-and-iron 
across the water; it may not be as wicked, but 
it is far more contemptible. The United States 
has signally and culpably failed to keep its prom- 
ises made in the Hague Conventions, and to stand 
for the right. Instead, it has taken refuge in the 
world-old neutrality between right and wrong 
which is always so debasing for the man prac- 
ticing it. As has been well said, such a neutral is 
the ignoblest work of God. 

There was much excuse for a general failure 
of Americans to understand the danger to Amer- 
ica prior to what happened in this world war. 
But now there is no excuse whatever. Now, 
thanks to our own feeble shirking of duty, we 
know that if any great nation menaces us, no 
matter how innocent of offense we may be, we 
have absolutely nothing to expect from other na- 
tions. 

The United States has — and deserves to have 
—only one friend in the world. This is the 
United States. We have ourselves treated the 
Hague Conventions as scraps of paper; and we 
cannot expect any one else to show the respect 
for such treaties which we have lacked. Our 
safety and therefore the safety of democratic in- 
stitutions rests on our own strength and only on 
our own strength. If we are a true democracy, 
if we really believe in government of the people 


846 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [June 


by the people and for the people, if we believe in 
social and industrial justice to be achieved 
through the people, and therefore in the right 
of the people to demand the service of all the 
people, let us make the Army fundamentally an 
army of the whole people. 

This will be carrying out the democratic ideal. 
The policy advocated for Britain by Lord Rob- 
erts was really the necessary complement to the 
policy advocated for Britain by Lloyd-George. 
In a democracy service should be required of 
every man, in peace and in war; we should guar- 
antee to every man his rights, and require from 
each man the full performance of his duties. It 
may well be that in the end we shall find it worth 
while to insist that all our young men, at their 
entrance to manhood, perform a year’s industrial 
service — in the harvest fields, in city sanitation, 
on the roads, anywhere. Such service would be 
equally beneficial to the son of the millionaire 
and to the boy who grows up in the crowded 
quarters of our great cities or out on lonely farms 
in the back country. 

This is for the future. As for the present, it 
it is certain that a half year’s military service 
would be a priceless boon to these young men 
themselves as well as to the nation. It would 
tend to social cohesion. We would gain a genu- 
ine citizens’ army, and we would gain a far 
higher type of citizenship. Our young men, 
at the outset of their lives, would be trained— 
not merely to shoot and to drill, which are only 
small parts of military training — but to habits 
of bodily endurance and moral self-mastery, to 
command and to obey, to act on their own 
initiative and to understand and promptly execute 


1917] UNCLE SAM’S ONLY FRIEND 847 


orders, to respect themselves and to respect oth- 
ers, and to understand that they are to serve 
their country with deeds and not words only. 
Under such conditions the young American would 
enter manhood accustomed to take pride in that 
disciplined spirit of orderly self-reliance com- 
bined with ability to work with others, which is 
the most essential element in the success of a 
great, free, modern democracy. 


MURDER ON THE HIGH SEAS 


On the ninth of May, 1915, two days after the 
Lusitania was torpedoed without warning by a 
German submarine, Colonel Roosevelt made the 
following statement in the press: 


Tue German submarines have established no 
effective blockade of the British and French 
coast lines. They have endeavored to prevent 
the access of French, British and neutral ships 
to Britain and France by attacks upon them 
which defy every principle of international law 
as laid down in innumerable existing treaties, 
including The Hague Conventions. Many of 
these attacks have represented pure piracy; and 
not a few of them have been accompanied by mur- 
der on an extended scale. In the case of the 
Lusitania the scale was so vast that the murder 
became wholesale. 

A number of American ships had already been 
torpedoed in similar fashion. In two cases 
American lives were lost. When the Lusitania 
sank some twelve hundred non-combatants, men, 
women and children, were drowned, and more 


. 


848 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [June 


than a hundred of these were Americans. Cen- 
turies have passed since any war vessel of a 
civilized power has shown such ruthless brutality 
toward non-combatants, and especially toward 
women and children. The Moslem pirates of the 
Barbary Coast behaved at times in similar fash- 
ion, until the civilized nations joined in suppress- 
ing them; and the other pirates who were out- 
casts from among these civilized nations also at 
one time perpetrated similar deeds, until they 
were sunk or hung. But none of these old-time 
pirates committed murder on so vast a scale as 
in the case of the Lusitania. 

The day after the tragedy the newspapers re- 
ported in one column that in Queenstown there 
lay by the score the bodies of women and children, 
some of the dead women still clasping the bodies 
of the little children they held in their arms when 
death overwhelmed them. In another column 
they reported the glee expressed by the Berlin 
journals at this “ great victory of German naval 
policy.” It was a victory over the defenseless 
and the unoffending, and its signs and trophies 
were the bodies of the murdered women and chil- 
dren. 

Our treaties with Prussia in 1785, 1799, and 
1828, still in force in this regard, provide that 
if one of the contracting parties should be at 
war with any other power the free intercourse 
and commerce of the subjects or citizens of the 
party remaining neutral with the belligerent pow- 
ers shall not be interrupted. Germany has treated 
this treaty as she has treated other scraps of 
paper. 

But the offense goes far deeper than this. The 
action of the German submarines in the cases 


1917] MURDER ON THE HIGH SEAS 849 


cited can be justified only by a plea which would 
likewise justify the wholesale poisoning of wells 
in the path of a hostile army, or the shipping of 
infected rags into the cities of a hostile country ; 
a plea which would justify the torture of prison- 
ers and the reduction of captured women to the 
slavery of concubinage. Those who advance 
such a plea will accept but one counter plea — 
strength, the strength and courage of the just 
man armed. 

When those who guide the military policy of 
a state hold up to the soldiers of their army 
the Huns, and the terror once caused by the 
Huns, for their imitation, they thereby render 
themselves responsible for any Hunnish deed 
which may follow. The destruction of cities 
like Louvain and Dinant, the scientific vivisection 
of Belgium as a warning to other nations, the 
hideous wrongdoing to civilians, men, women and 
children in Belgium and nothern France, in or- 
der thereby to terrorize the civilian population — 
all these deeds, and those like them, done on 
the land, have now been paralleled by what has 
happened on the sea. 

In the teeth of these things, we earn as a 
nation measureless scorn and contempt if we fol- 
low the lead of those who exalt peace above 
righteousness, if we heed the voices of those 
feeble folk who bleat to high heaven that there 
is peace when there is no peace. For many 
months our government has preserved between 
right and wrong a neutrality which would have 
excited the emulous admiration of Pontius Pi- 
late—the arch-typical neutral of all time. 
We have urged as a justification for failing to do 
eur duty in Mexico that to do so would benefit 


850 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [June 


American dollars. Are we now*to change faces 
and advance the supreme interest of American 
dollars as a justification for continuance in the 
refusal to do the duty imposed on us in con- 
nection with the world war? 

Unless we act with immediate decision and 
vigor we shall have failed in the duty demanded 
by humanity at large, and demanded even more 
clearly by the self-respect of the American Re- 
public. 

We did not act with immediate decision and 
vigor. We did not act at all. The President im- 
mediately after the sinking made a speech in 
which occurred his sentence about our “ being 
too proud to fight.” This was accepted, very 
properly, by foreign nations as the statement 
of our official head that we ranked in point of 
national spirit and power with China. I then 
published the following interview: 


“T think that China is entitled to draw all the 
comfort she can from this statement, and it would 
be well for the United States to ponder seriously 
what the effect upon China has been of managing 
her foreign affairs during the last fifteen years 
on the theory thus enunciated. 

“Tf the United States is satisfied with occupy- 
ing some time in the future the precise interna- 
tional position that China now occupies, then the 
United States can afford to act on this theory. 
But it cannot so act if it desires to regain the posi- 
tion won for it under Washington and by the 
men who in the days of Abraham Lincoln wore 
the blue under Grant and the gray under Lee. 

“T very earnestly hope that the President. will 
act promptly. The proper time for deliberation 


oa 


1917] MURDER ON THE HIGH SEAS 851 


was prior to sending his message that our Govern- 
ment would hold Germany to a ‘strict account- 
ability’ if it did the things which it has now 
actually done. 

“The 150 babies drowned on the Lusitania, the 
hundreds of women drowned with them — scores 
of these women and children being Americans — 
and the American ship, the Gulfight, which was 
torpedoed, offer an eloquent commentary on the 
actual working of the theory that it is not neces- 
sary to assert rights and that a policy of blood 
and iron can safely be met by a policy of milk and 
water. 

“T see it stated in the dispatches from Wash- 
ington that Germany now offers to stop the prac- 
tice of murder on the high seas, committed in 
violation of the neutral rights she is pledged to 
preserve, if we will now abandon further neutral 
tights, which by her treaty she has solemnly 
pledged herself to see that we exercise without 
molestation. 

“Such a proposal is not even entitled to an an- 
swer. The manufacture and shipments of arms 
and ammunition to any belligerent is moral or 
immoral, according to the use to which the arms 
and munitions are to be put. If they are to be 
used to prevent the redress of hideous wrongs 
inflicted on Belgium then it is immoral to ship 
them. If they are to be used for the redress of 
those wrongs and the restoration of Belgium to 
her deeply-wronged and unoffending people, then 
it is eminently moral to send them. 

“Without 24 hours’ delay this country should 
and could take effective action. It should take 
possession of all the interned German ships, in- 
cluding the German warships, and hold them as a 


852 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Dee. 


guarantee that ample satisfaction shall be given 
us. Furthermore it should declare that in view 
of Germany’s murderous offenses against the 
rights of neutrals all commerce with Germany 
shall be forthwith forbidden and all commerce of 
every kind permitted and encouraged with France, 
England, Russia, and the rest of the civilized 
world. 

“T do not believe that the firm assertion of our 
rights means war, but, in any event, it is well to 
remember there are things worse than war. 

“Let us as a nation understand that peace is 
worth having only when it is the hand-maiden of 
international righteousness and of national self- 
respect.” 


THE ENSLAVEMENT OF THE BELGIANS 


A LETTER ADDRESSED TO A MASS MEETING HELD AT 
CARNEGIE HALL, NEW YORK, ON DECEMBER I5, 
1916, TO PROTEST AGAINST THE BRUTAL TREAT- 
MENT OF THE BELGIANS BY THEIR GERMAN 
** CONQUERORS ” 


I EARNESTLY wish you all success in your meet- 
ing; and all Americans who are proud of the 
good name of their country and also have in them 
the capacity for general indignation on behalf of 
a foully wronged people, must join in hearty 
thanks to you and your associates. 

Germany’s campaign of methodically organized 
atrocities against the unhappy Belgian people has 
culminated in the transplanting of over a hundred 
thousand Belgian men into a condition of state- 
slavery in Germany where their labor is to be used 


1916] ENSLAVING THE BELGIANS 853 


to aid in the conquest of their fellow-country- 
men. Similar transplantings of civilian non- 
combatants, both men and women, into slavery in 
Germany have already occurred in Northern 
France. 

This action is paralleled by the action of the 
Assyrian conquerors of Syria and Palestine; but 
until the present war broke out it was supposed 
that such hideous infamies were effectively. 
checked by the system of international law which 
has grown up under modern Christian civiliza- 
tion. But Germany has trampled under foot 
every device of international law for securing the 
protection of the weak and the unoffending. She 
has shown an utter disregard of all considerations 
of pity, mercy, humanity and international moral- 
ity. She has counted upon the terror inspired by 
her ruthless brutality to protect her from retalia- 
tion or interference. 

The outrages committed on our own people 
have been such as the United States has never 
before been forced to endure, and have included 
the repeated killing of our men, women and 
children. The sinking of the Marina and the 
Cheming the other day, with the attendant murder 
of six Americans, was but the most recent in an 
unbroken chain of injuries and insults, which by 
comparison make mere wrong to our property 
interests sink into absolute insignificance. 

As long as neutrals keep silent, or speak apolo- 
getically, or take refuge in the futilities of the 
professional pacifists, there will be no cessation 
in these brutalities. But surely this last and 
crowning brutality, which amounts to the impo- 
sition of a cruel form of state-slavery on a help- 
less and unoffending conquered nation, must make 


854 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Jan. 


our people realize that they imperil their own 
souls, that they degrade their own manhood, if 
they do not bear emphatic testimony against the 
perpetration of such iniquity. 

I am glad to be one among the Americans who 
thus bear testimony. Yours very truly, THEO- 
DORE ROOSEVELT. 


APOSTLES OF FOLLY AND FATUITY 


A LETTER TO THE CONGRESS OF CONSTRUCTIVE 
PATRIOTISM HELD UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE 
NATIONAL SECURITY LEAGUE ON JANUARY 26, 


IQI7 


As it is unfortunately impossible for me to be 
present in person, I desire in this letter to express 
my heartiest good wishes for the success of your 
meeting and my belief that the movement in which 
you are engaged is one of the really vital move- 
ments — indeed at the moment it is I think the 
really vital movement — for the ultimate honor 
and welfare of this country. 

We need, more than anything else in this coun- 
try, thorough-going Americanism,— for unless we 
are Americans and nothing else, we are not a 
nation at all— and thorough-going preparedness 
in time of peace against war,— for if we are not 
thus prepared we shall remain a nation only until 
some more virile nation finds it worth while to 
conquer us. 

The work of preparedness — spiritual and ma- 
terial, civic, industrial and military—and the 
work of Americanization are simply the two para- 
mount phases or elements of the work of con- 


iory7t FOLLY AND FATUITY 855 


structive patriotism which your Congress has 
gathered to foster. There can be no real pre- 
paredness in this country unless this country is 
thoroughly Americanized; for only a patriotic 
people will prepare; and there can be no deep 
national feeling for America until we are all of 
us Americans through and through. 
Americanism means many things. It means 
equality of rights and, therefore, equality of duty 
and of obligation. It means service to our com- 
mon country. It means loyalty to one flag, to our 
flag, the flag of all of us. It means on the part 
of each of us respect for the rights of the rest of 
us. It means that all of us guarantee the rights 
ofeach ofus. It means free education, genuinely 
representative government, freedom of speech and 
thought, equality before the law for all men, 
genuine political and religious freedom, and the 
democratizing of industry so as to give at least a 
measurable equality of opportunity for all, and 
so as to place before us as our ideal in all indus- 
tries where this ideal is possible of attainment, 
the system of cooperative ownership and manage- 
ment, in order that the tool users may, so far as 
possible, become the tool owners. Everything is 
un-American that tends either to government by 
a plutocracy or government by a mob. To divide 
along the lines of section or caste or creed is un- 
American. All privileges based on wealth, and 
all enmity to honest men merely because they are 
wealthy, are un-American — both of them equally 
so. Americanism means the virtues of courage, 
honor, justice, truth, sincerity, and hardihood — 
the virtues that made America. The things that 
will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, 
peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty- 


856 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Jan. 


first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick 
theory of life. 

Preparedness must be of the soul no less than 
of the body. We must keep lofty ideals steadily 
before us, and must train ourselves in practical 
fashion so that we may realize these ideals. 
Throughout our whole land we must have funda- 
mental common purposes, to be achieved through 
education, through intelligent organization and 
through the recognition of the great vital stand- 
ards of life and living. We must make Ameri- 
canism and Americanization mean the same thing 
to the native born and to the foreign born; to the 
man and to the woman; to the rich and to the 
poor; to the employer and to the wage-worker. 
If we believe in American standards, we shall 
insist that all privileges springing from them be 
extended to immigrants, and that they in return 
accept these standards with whole-hearted and 
entire loyalty. Either we must stand absolutely 
by our ideals and conceptions of duty, or else we 
are against them. There is no middle course, and 
if we attempt to find one, we insure for ourselves 
defeat and disaster. 

Citizenship must mean an undivided loyalty to 
America ; there can be no citizenship on the 50-50 
basis; there can be no loyalty half to America 
and half to Germany or England or France or 
Ireland, or any other country. Our citizens must 
be Americans, and nothing else, and if they try 
to be something else in addition, then they should 
be sent out of this country and back to the other 
country to which, in their hearts, they pay alle- 
giance. We must have one American language ; 
the language of the Declaration of Independence 
and the Constitution, of Lincoln’s Gettysburg 


1917] FOLLY ‘AND FATUITY 857 


Speech and Second Inaugural, and of Washing- 
ton’s farewell address. The American standard 
of living conditions and the American standard of 
working conditions both must be high. We must 
insist upon them for immigrants as well as for 
the native born. We must insist that the people 
who work here, live here; that they are not mere 
birds of passage from abroad. We must insist 
upon industrial justice, and we cannot get it if 
we let ignorance and need be preyed upon either 
by vulpine cunning or by wolfish brutality, and if 
we do not train the ignorant and the needy up to 
self-reliance and efficiency. 

Preparedness does not mean merely a man with 
a gun. It means that too; but it means a great 
deal more. It means that in this country we must 
secure conditions which will make the farmer and 
the working man understand that it is in a special 
sense their country; that the work of prepared- 
ness is entered into for the defense of the coun- 
try which belongs to them, to all of us, and the 
government of which is administered in their in- 
terest, in the interest of all of us. At this mo- 
ment Lloyd George is able to do more than any 
other man in rallying the people of Great Britain 
to the defense of that Empire, because the work- 
ing men, the men who actually do the manual 
labor, know that he has their welfare at heart, 
that the national ideal for which he is fighting is 
that which will give them the best chance for 
self-development, and for that happiness which 
comes to the man who achieves his rights at the 
same time that he performs his duties. He is 
followed by the people as a whole because they 
know that he stands for the people as a whole. 
We in America who are striving for preparedness 


858 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES (Jan. 


must make it evident that the preparedness is to 
serve the people as a whole. The war on the 
other side has shown that there can be no efficient 
army in the field unless the men behind are trained 
and efficient and unless they are whole-heartedly 
loyal in their patriotic devotion to their country. 
Here in America we must do justice to the work- 
ers, or they will not feel that this is the country 
to which their devotion is due; and we must exact 
patriotic devotion to the flag from them, for if 
they fail to render it they are unfit to live in this 
country at all. I appeal to all Americans to join 
in the common effort for the common good. Any 
man who holds back and refuses to serve his 
country with whole-hearted devotion, on the 
ground that enough has not been done for him, 
will do well to remember that any such holding 
back or lukewarmness of patriotism is itself an 
admission of inferiority, and admission of per- 
sonal unfitness for citizenship in a democracy, and 
ought to deprive him of the rights of citizenship. 
As for the men of means, from whom we have the 
right to expect a special quality of leadership, let 
them remember that, as much has been given to 
them so much will be expected of them, and that 
they have no moral right whatsoever to the enjoy- 
ment of the ease and the comforts of life beyond 
what their fellows enjoy unless they render sery- 
ice beyond what their fellows render. 

I advocate military preparedness not for the 
sake of war, but for the sake of safe-guarding 
this nation against war so long as that is pos- 
sible, and of guaranteeing its honor and safety 
if war should nevertheless come. We hope ulti- 
mately the day will come on this earth when wars 
will cease. But at present the realization of that 


1917] FOLLY AND FATUITY 859 


hope seems as far in the future as the realization 
of that other hope, that some day in the future all 
crime shall cease. By wise action, based equally 
on observed good faith and on thoroughly pre- 
pared strength — the precise characteristics which 
during the last few years we have failed to show 
—we may hope to limit the probable field of 
wars; but at present it is as certain as anything 
can be that every great nation will at some time 
or other, as generations follow generations, have 
to face war, and that ours will be no exception to 
the rule. It is, therefore, not merely folly, but 
criminal and unpatriotic folly, to fail to prepare, 
or to preach the ignoble cult of the professional 
pacifist, the peace-at-any-price man. 

We need first and foremost a thoroughly effi- 
cient and large Navy; a navy kept under profes- 
sional guidance; a navy trained at every point 
with the sole purpose of making it the most for- 
midable possible instrument of war the moment 
that war comes; a navy, the mismanagement of 
which shall be treated as a capital offense against 
the nation. In the next place, we need a small 
but highly efficient regular army, of say a quarter 
million men ; an army where provision 1s made for 
a certain proportion of the promotions to be by 
merit, instead of merely seniority; an army of 
short-term soldiers, better paid than at present; 
and an army which, like the navy, shall be under 
the guidance of a general staff. Moreover, every 
year there should be at one time field maneuvers 
of from fifty to one hundred thousand men, so 
that the Army Commander, the Corps Command- 
ers, the Division, Brigade and Regimental Com- 
manders, who would have to face a foe at the out- 
break of war, would all have had experience in 


860 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  {Jan. 


performing their duties, under actual field condi- 
tions, in time of peace. 

The events of the last summer have shown 
that the Hay Bill was as foolish and unpatriotic 
a bit of flintlock legislation as was ever put on the 
statute book. I have the greatest’admiration and 
respect for the individual militiamen who went 
to the border. But the system under which they 
were sent worked rank injustice to most of them, 
rank favoritism for some of them, and was worse 
than ineffective from the national standpoint. It 
is folly and worse than folly, to pretend that the 
National Guard is an efficient second line of de- 
fense. Remember also that the laws passed 
nominally for the betterment of the regular army 
and navy are producing almost no result. The 
delays in building the ships are extraordinary. 
The shortage of enlisted men in the navy and 
army is appalling, nor is it being made good. It 
cannot wholly be made good under the volunteer 
system. But much could be done. Our first care 
should be to make the navy and the regular army 
thoroughly efficient. 

But this is not enough. To trust only to the 
Navy and the regular Army amounts merely to 
preparing to let the other men do it. If we 
ordinary citizens are fit to be citizens of this coun- 
try, we shall fit ourselves to defend this country. 
No man has a right to citizenship in a democracy 
if, for any cause whatsoever, he is unwilling to 
fight, or is morally or mentally incapable of fight- 
ing, for the defense of that democracy against a 
powerful alien aggressor. If a man is physically 
unfit but is right in his soul and in his head, then 
he can render high service to the nation although 
incapable of bearing arms. But, if from any 


1017] FOLLY AND FATUITY 861 


moral or mental causes, he is unwilling to train 
himself to bear arms, and to bear them if neces- 
sary in his country’s cause, then he has no moral 
right to vote. 

Be it remembered that such a national armed 
force as that for which I ask, while very powerful 
for defense would be almost useless for aggres- 
sion. I wish to see our Navy second only to that 
of Great Britain, because Great Britain is the only 
power whose naval needs are greater than ours. 
I do not ask that our Army become second, or 
anywhere near second, to Germany’s, because 
Germany’s military needs are far greater than 
ours; but merely that relatively to our size our 
Army be made to correspond to that of Switzer- 
land. 

This would mean that for the last two or three 
years of school our boys would have some mili- 
tary training, substantially such as is given in the 
Swiss and Australian schools; and that at about 
the age of nineteen they would spend six months 
in actual service in the field (or at sea with the 
fleet) with the colors, and would thereafter for 
three or four years be required to spend a couple 
of weeks each year with the colors. Each year, 
among those who had served well for the six 
months, a number could be chosen to be trained 
as officers. These would then be given by the 
nation for two years, free, a training somewhat 
like that at West Point, although not as rigid 
or as thorough. They would be required to pay 
for this training by, for a certain number of 
months during each of the few following years, 
doing their part in drilling the recruits of that 
year. It would probably be necessary to pay the 
recruits a small minimum wage so as to be sure 


862 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Jan. 


that the poorest family would not suffer hardship 
because of the absence of the young man for six 
months. No man would be allowed to purchase 
exemption. The sons of the richest men in the 
land would have to serve exactly like any one 
else and do exactly the same work — which, inci- 
dentally, would be a bit of uncommon good for- 
tune for them. 

Side by side with this preparation of the man- 
hood of the country must go the preparation of its 
resources. The Government should keep a rec- 
ord of every factory or work shop of any kind 
which would be called upon to render service in 
war, and of all the railroads. All the workers 
in such factories and railroads should be tabulated 
so that in the event of war they would not be sent 
to the front if they could do better service where 
they were —although as far as possible every 
strong man should be sent to the front, to the posi- 
tion of danger, while work done in safety should 
be done by women and old men. The transpor- 
tation system should receive special study. Fac- 
tories which would be needed in time of war 
should be encouraged by the Government to keep 
themselves properly prepared in time of peace, 
and should be required to fill specimen orders, so 
that there would be no chance of their breaking 
down in the event of a sudden call at the outbreak 
of war. Industrial preparedness must go hand 
in hand with military preparedness. 

Indeed, this military preparedness and the ac- 
ceptance by the nation of the principle of uni- 
versal, obligatory military training in time of 
peace as a basis of universal, obligatory service in 
time of war, would do more than anything else to 
help us solve our most pressing social and indus- 


1917] FOLLY AND FATUITY 863 


trial problems in time of peace. It would Amer- 
icanize and nationalize our people as nothing else 
could possibly do. It would teach our young men 
that there are other ideals besides making money. 
It would render them alert, energetic, self-reliant, 
capable of command and willing to obey ; respect- 
ful to others and demanding respect from others 
for themselves. It would be the best possible 
way to teach us how to use our collective strength 
in order to accomplish those social and industrial 
tasks which must be done by all of us collectively 
if we are to do them well. 

Just before this war began, the male and female 
apostles of folly and fatuity were at their highest 
pitch of denunciation of preparedness, and were 
announcing at the tops of their voices that never 
again would there be a great war. These preach- 
ers of professional pacifism, of peace-at-any- 
price, of peace put before righteousness and honor 
and duty, temporarily lead astray many good and 
earnest men and women. These good, honest, 
intelligent men and women can be shown the 
facts and when shown the facts will ultimately 
see the profound immorality as well as the utter 
folly of the professional pacifist or peace-at-any- 
price position. There is, however, little to hope 
for as regards the professional pacifists them- 
selves. The antics of their brethren in England 
has shown that even although brayed in a mortar 
their folly shall not depart from them. At the 
moment, their clamor is drowned by the thunder 
of the great war. But when this war comes to an 
end their voices will be as loud as ever on behalf 
of folly and wickedness, and their brazen effront- 
ery will be proof against all shame as well as 
against all wisdom. They will unblushingly re- 


864 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [April 


peat every prophecy that has just been falsified by 
the merciless march of events; they will reiterate 
all the promises that have always been broken in 
the past and will always be broken in the future. 
They are in the majority of cases primarily con- 
cerned for the safety of their own wretched 
bodies, and they are physically safe in the course 
they follow, for if the disaster they court should 
come upon this nation, they would themselves in- 
stantly flee to safety, while their folly and wrong 
doing would be atoned for by the blood of better 
and braver men. 

It is useless to appeal to these persons. But it 
is necessary to warn our people against them. If 
our people fail to prepare, whatever the real rea- 
son may be and whatever the reason is which they 
allege, their fate in the end will be the same. 
Sooner or later, in such case, either we ourselves 
or our children will tread the stony path of dis- 
aster and eat the bitter bread of shame. Faith- 
fully yours, THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 


THE DUTY OF EVERY AMERICAN 


FROM AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE A DELEGATION 
OF NEW YORK BUSINESS MEN IN BEHALF OF THE 
THIRD LIBERTY LOAN, AT OYSTER BAY, LONG IS- 
LAND, APRIL, 1917 


THE first thing that I wish to do is, as an 
American, heartily to thank you men and women 
who have done and are doing the actual work of 
floating the Liberty Bonds. It is a vitally im- 
portant work, and it is as laborious and exhaust- 
ing as it is important. I wish that the worthy 


1917] DUTY OF EVERY AMERICAN 865 


people who think the governmental processes, 
even so far as they affect the public, go on with- 
out effort, might have a little of the experience 
you have had in handling this work that you have 
been on, and they would learn the necessity of co- 
ordinated effort. 

There are several hundred of you men, all 
above or below the military age, except, as I have 
been informed, three who have been exempted 
because of dependent families and one man who 
has been doing his best to get into the army but 
has been rejected for physical reasons. I dwell 
upon that fact because, as you know, I feel that 
the prime duty of the fighting man who can get 
to the front is to try to get to the front. The 
thing that primarily counts in this war is the 
strength of the fighting man. The primary work 
is the work of the men at the front, but the men 
at the front cannot do that work unless they have 
the weapons, the instrumentalities with which to 
do it. 

It is only you and those like you who can fur- 
nish the means to secure those instrumentalities, 
and therefore the work of you and of those like 
you has been second in importance only to the 
work of the men at the front. Without it the 
work of the men at the front could not go on. 
You men and women have devoted every energy 
to it, have sacrificed all your private interests, and 
have acted in the broadest and fullest spirit of 
patriotism. A loan does not float itself. No 
governmental work does itself. Somebody has to 
do it. You and your associates in the other dis- 
tricts of the country have assumed this burden 
of disinterested service to the country. 

I appeal to our people to back you to the fullest 


866 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [April 


limit. This is the people’s war. It is America’s 
war. It is a war for our children and for the 
welfare of our children’s children. If we do not 
win now, fighting abroad beside our allies, then 
sooner or later our sons or our grandsons will 
have to fight here at home without allies. We are 
fighting in our own quarrel. The man who does 
not think that it was America’s duty to fight for 
her own sake in view of the infamous conduct of 
Germany toward us stands on a level with a man 
who wouldn’t think it necessary to fight in a pri- 
vate quarrel because his wife’s face was slapped. 

We have a special and intolerable grievance 
against Germany, and we are warranted in fight- 
ing in the war, because of that special injury of 
our own. Warranted is not a strong enough 
word: We were required to go to war, if we 
were ever hereafter individually to hold up our 
heads as citizens of a free nation. But in addi- 
tion to these special grievances that we as citizens 
of the United States had against Germany, we 
also are fighting in the quarrel of civilization 
against barbarism, of liberty against tyranny! 
Germany has become a menace to the whole 
world. She is the most dangerous enemy of 
liberty now existing. She has shown herself 
utterly ruthless, treacherous and brutal. When 
I use those words, I use them with scientific pre- 
cision. The American who is not now heart and 
soul against her and heart and soul in favor of 
fighting this war through to a victorious conclu- 
sion, to the peace of overwhelming victory, is a 
traitor to this country and a traitor to mankind. 
He is unfit to live in America. He is unfit to be 
a free man, for his soul is the soul of a slave. 
And if that American has associated himself with 


1917] DUTY OF EVERY AMERICAN 867 


other Americans in order to work against the 
interests of America, as has been done in the 
case of the German-American Alliance, then I 
hope with all my heart that Congress and the 
State legislatures will act, will dissolve the Ger- 
man-American Alliance, and if there is a method 
of getting at the leaders of it, will get at them in 
any way that is necessary. 

No man can serve two masters in this country 
at this time. There can be no such thing as a 
fifty-fifty allegiance here. If the man is not an 
American, and nothing else, he should be sent 
out of this country. (Applause.) If he plays 
the part of sedition in this country, he should be 
shot. But if he is just neutral, then let him get 
out to some other neutral country. Don’t let 
him be neutral here any longer. And, inciden- 
tally, I wish to say that is my view of the con- 
scientious objector, too. 

Now and then I receive protests from some 
conscientious objector who says that he expects 
me to respect his conscience. I will. But he 
has got to respect mine, too. In the first place, 
if his conscience makes him act either a fool or 
a traitor, then I should advise him to take it out 
and look at it and see if it is in good working 
order. In the next place, I would try to find out 
what he is conscientious about. He may be con- 
scientious about killing somebody else. He may 
be conscientious about keeping his own carcass 
safe from injury. Now, if he merely objects to 
killing some one else, then send him to the front 
with a spade to dig trenches, in the danger zone, 
or else put him on a mine sweeper. Do you know 
about mine sweepers? They go about and col- 
lect mines. If they don’t collect them just right, 


868 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [April 


they go up. If you put a conscientious objector 
on a mine sweeper, he is not in danger of killing 
any one else. But I cannot guarantee his own 
personal safety. Now, if he will do that work, 
all right, I have got nothing to say —treat him 
all right. Butif he won’t do that work, if he says 
that his conscience forbids him to do any of the 
necessary work of national self-defense, then I 
would answer that my conscience would forbid 
me to let him vote in a country which can only 
exist at all because its sons are willing to fight 
for it. 

So it is our business to stand by the men at 
the front. We can stand by them effectively only 
through action, such as you here and your asso- 
ciates and those like you in other districts are 
taking and have taken. We cannot fight this war 
without vast numbers of soldiers, ships, guns and 
airplanes, and vast quantities of food and muni- 
tions. For all this we must pay money. As the 
war is the war of all of us, so each of us, accord- 
ing to his or her ability, should bear some part 
of the burden. I want to etch that in. If there 
is an American in this country who at this time is © 
not bearing some part of the common burden, 
then he is not fit to be in the country at all. 

No man now-a-days should be able to feel that 
he has a right to a night’s sleep at the end of the 
day unless during the day he has done something 
for the common cause, the cause of all of us. 
Each of us should gladly and cheerfully sacrifice 
everything necessary in order to win this war. 
The men at the front, the men whose high privi- 
lege it is to be at the front, stand ready to sacri- 
fice life and limb and health for our dear land. 
We who are not given that high privilege, we 


1917] DUTY OF EVERY AMERICAN 869 


who cannot go to the front, must at least back 
them to the limit with the work of head and of 
hand, with our dollar and our self-sacrifice, our 
courage and endurance, our thrift and our intelli- 
gence, our labor and our money. Do the thing 
that is next, that is always the important point to 
make. Don’t resolve in a glow of virtue how 
good you are going to be next year. Do it now. 

Do the thing that is next, and at this moment 
the thing that is next for us here and for millions 
like us elsewhere in the land, the thing that is 
next is to raise the money for the Liberty Loan. 

I have said before this is the people’s war. 
Let us make the people themselves the owners 
of the debt incurred for the sake of the people. 
Every man, big or little, has a chance to subscribe. 
Let every wage-earner and every farmer subscribe 
what he can. He will thereby serve the country 
and he will thereby serve himself and his family, 
for he will strengthen his own economic position. 
I would like to drive that point home. 

Now, there are some forms of activity where 
no One can promise any money return for what 
is done, of course, that is especially the case with 
men who go tothe front. There can be no money 
reward in any way adequate for what they do. 
Again, it is true of such work as the work of the 
Red Cross, of the Y. M. C. A., of the Knights 
of Columbus, or all kindred organizations. If 
you put your money into them, you have put it in, 
making the sacrifice gladly and not expecting 
anything back. But in the case of the Liberty 
Loan, I am asking you to help the nation and help 
yourselves at the same time. 

The greatest good that can come to the indi- 
vidual himself is to put his money in the Liberty 


870 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [April 


Loan. That is the way he can best help the na- 
tion at this time, and he will help it as an incident 
to helping himself. The older among you will 
remember listening in time past now and then to 
frothy orators who in the name of the people 
denounced the bondholders. You have heard 
them say, “ Stand up for the people against the 
bondholders.” Fine! Now, let us stand up for 
the people against the bondholders, by making the 
people the bondholders. 

Let us make the people and the bondholders in- 
terchangeable terms; and after these loans have 
been floated let it be remembered that no human 
being without hypocrisy can denounce the bond- 
holders without denouncing the people, for the 
chance is open to every man to become one of 
the bondholders, and when I say to every man, 
I mean to every man. The conditions are such 
that anybody with a little self-denial and a little 
thrift can become to a certain extent a holder of 
the bonds of the United States. And the effort 
of you men and of those like you elsewhere has 
consistently been to make it especially easy for 
the men and women of small means to subscribe 
to the loans. And the security is the best in the 
world, for it will be good as long as this nation 
endures, and if the nation breaks, we shall all of 
us be broken, nothing will make any difference to 
any of us. 

Now, friends, I wish I could adequately ex- 
press to you my sense of appreciation of the work 
that you and those like you are doing. The finan- 
cial standing of this country depends primarily 
now upon the work of just such organizations as 
your organization here, and the welfare of our 
soldiers, the weight of our part in the war, de- 


1917] WAKE UP, AMERICA! 875 


pends upon your success. It depends upon other 
things in addition. We of course must see that 
there is the highest grade of efficiency reached by 
our public servants in handling the funds thus 
provided. But the funds have to be provided 
before they are handled. That ought to be ac- 
cepted as an axiomatic truth. So, you men and 
women here and the men and women like you en- 
gaged in similar tasks elsewhere through the 
country are standing by our soldiers in the 
trenches at the front. 

I thank you as an American and wish you well, 
and I am mighty glad to see you. 


WAKE UP, AMERICA! 


AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT PITTSBURG, PENNSYL- 
VANIA, ON JULY 27, 1917 


THE world is at this moment passing through 
one of those terrible periods of convulsion when 
the souls of men and of nations are tried as 
by fire. Woe to the man or to the nation that 
at such a time stands as once Laodicea stood; 
as the people of ancient Meroz stood, when they 
dared not come to the help of the Lord against 
the mighty! In such a crisis the moral weakling 
is the enemy of the right; and the pacifist is as 
surely a traitor to his country and to humanity 
as is the most brutal wrongdoer. 

At the outbreak of the war our people were 
stunned, blinded, terrified by the extent of the 
world disaster. Those among our leaders who 
were greedy, those who were selfish and ease- 
loving, those who were timid, and those who 


872 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [July 


were merely shortsighted, all joined to blindfold 
the eyes and dull the conscience of the people so 
that it might neither see iniquity nor gird its loins 
for the inevitable struggle. But at last we stand 
with our faces to the light. At last we have 
faced our duty. Now it behooves us to do this 
duty with masterful efficiency. 

Weare inthe war. But we are not yet awake. 
We are passing through, in exaggerated form, the 
phase through which England passed during the 
first year of the war. A very large number of 
Englishmen fooled themselves with the idea that 
they lived on an island and were safe anyhow, 
that the war would soon be over, and that if they 
went on with their business as usual, and waved 
flags and applauded partiotic speeches, somebody 
else would do the fighting for them. England has 
seen the error of her ways; she has paid in blood 
and agony for her shortsightedness; she is now 
doing her duty with stern resolution. We are 
repeating her early errors on a larger scale; and 
assuredly we shall pay heavily if we do not in 
time wake from our shortsighted apathy and 
foolish, self-sufficient optimism. 

We live on a continent ; we have trusted to that 
fact for safety in the past; we do not under- 
stand that world conditions have changed and 
that the oceans and even the air have become 
highways for military aggression. The exploits 
of the German U-boat off Nantucket last summer 
— exploits which nothing but feebleness, consid- 
erations of political expediency and downright 
lack of courage on our part permitted — showed 
that if Germany, or any other possible opponent 
of ours were free to deal with us the security 
that an ocean barrier once offered was annihi- 


1917] WAKE UP, AMERICA! 873 


lated. In other words, the battle front of Europe 
is slowly spreading over the whole world. Un- 
less we beat Germany in Europe, we shall have 
to fight her deadly ambition on our own coasts 
and in our own continent. A great American 
army in Europe now is the best possible insurance 
against a great European or Asiatic army in our 
own country a couple of years, or a couple of 
decades hence. 

Make no mistake. We are fighting for human- 
ity; but we are also, and primarily, fighting for 
our own vital interests. Our army in France 
will fight for France and Belgium; but most of 
all it will be fighting for America. Until we 
make the world safe for America (and inci- 
dentally until we make democracy safe in Amer- 
ica), it is empty rhetoric to talk of making the 
world safe for democracy; and no one of these 
objects can be obtained merely by highsounding 
words, or by anything else save by the exercise 
of hard, grim, commonsense in advance prepara- 
tion, and then by unflinching courage in the use 
of the hardened strength which has thus been pre- 
pared. 

The only really effective preparation is prep- 
aration in advance. Only our vanity can blind us 
to the painful and humiliating proof of this 
elementary fact which our experience in the world 
war is at this very moment furnishing. There 
Was some excuse, although no real justification, 
for our unpreparedness prior to the breaking out 
of the world war three years ago. But when 
once the giant letters of warning were written 
in flame and blood across the whole horizon, it 
seems literally incredible that we should have be- 
haved with such utter fatuity as to say that there 


874 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [July 


was no need of preparedness, and that the war 
did not concern us, and that no issue affecting 
our interest or our conscience was at stake. 
When the Lusitania was sunk it was evident not 
merely that we ought to prepare for war, but 
that we were actually at war (although only at 
the receiving end—the position we have ever 
since occupied). However, we did not prepare. 
For two years and a half we followed the clamor 
of the professional pacifists who shrieked that 
unpreparedness would “keep us out of war.” 
They insisted that our tame submission to insult 
and injury, our timid refusal to protest against 
international wrong, and our supine failure to 
prepare for our own defense had “ kept us out of 
war ”’ and would do so in the future. 

Well, you see the result. We did not prepare. 
Neither did we keep out of war. Germany’s 
note of January 31 was in effect a downright 
declaration of war, and congress by its action 
showed this to be the fact, for it did not declare 
war, but stated that Germany was already at war 
with us— which was the truth. Our helpless 
refusal either to resent insult or injury or to 
prepare for self-defense did not win Germany’s 
good will, and did not avert the war. It merely 
earned Germany’s contempt, and rendered us 
impotent to make our strength effective when at 
last we drifted stern foremost into war. Among 
nations, as among individuals, we gain the good 
will of others only by inspiring respect, not con- 
tempt, and the bully has less respect for those 
whom he can wrong with impunity than he has 
for any other living creatures. 

Preparedness does not always avert war. But 
unpreparedness never averts war, and always 


1917] WAKE UP, AMERICA! 875 


renders war lengthy, and possibly humiliating, if 
the enemy is formidable. If after the outbreak 
of the world war, or even after the sinking of 
the Lusitania, we had begun energetically and 
thoroughly to prepare, we would now have had 
thousands of aircraft, submarine chasers, cargo 
ships and great guns; three months ago we would 
have put a couple of million men in France; and 
the war would have been over at this moment — 
indeed, if we had thoroughly prepared we would 
probably not have had to go to war at all. 

In contrast to what we thus ought to have 
done, and could readily have done, look at the 
actual facts as they are. Six months have elapsed 
since Germany went to war with us; nearly four 
months since we reluctantly admitted that we 
were at war. We have not at this time a single 
airplane fit to send across the German lines; 
and months must pass before we can manufac- 
ture such an airplane. We have no heavy artil- 
lery to put in the battle line, none that can be 
pitted against the Germans, and in any serious en- 
gagement gallant Pershing and his gallant little 
force will have to trust to French and English 
guns. Sims will do everything that can be done 
with his submarine chasers, but they are so few 
that they represent a mere tiny fraction of the 
English force. It will be a year after the dec- 
laration of war before we begin to get a fair 
number of big cargo ships. We have not enough 
rifles for our men. We are painfully short in 
equipment. We have not yet begun to assemble 
the draft army; the first elementary, or primary, 
officers’ training camps have not finished; the Na- 
tional Guard has only just begun to mobilize. 
We have put a fragment of our fine little regular 


876 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [July 


army into France; we can rest assured that 
everything possible will be done by Gen. Pershing 
and the officers and men under him; but even this 
little army is still fitting itself to go to the front; 
and as it is composed almost exclusively of in- 
fantry without artillery, it would be helpless 
against any well-equipped enemy were it not 
aided by our allies. Numerically, it is much 
smaller than the army which Belgium, or Servia 
or Rumania has in the field; it probably repre- 
sents about one-half of 1 per cent. of the allied 
forces now arrayed against the central powers. 

This is the sum total of the activities of a na- 
tion of 100,000,000 people, and in possession of 
incalculable wealth and boundless resources, dur- 
ing the six months following its entry (after two 
and one-half years’ warning) into the greatest 
war in history; a war in which every other great 
nation has been forced to exert the fullest power, 
and strike with the utmost efficiency, within a 
week or a fortnight after it entered the conflict. 
Look at what Germany did to Belgium in the 
first 30 days of the war. We would now be in 
exactly the position of Belgium, were it not that 
we owe our safety—our ignoble safety —to 
the British fleet and the French and British 
armies. 

The simple truth is that, relatively to the other 
great nations of the world, we have in this war 
exhibited ourselves a miracle of inefficiency ; and 
we shall always be inefficient during the first vital 
months of any war until we learn to prepare in 
advance. Flag-waving, and uttering and ap- 
plauding speeches, and singing patriotic songs, are 
excellent in so far as they are turned into cool 
foresight and preparation and grim resolution to 


1917] WAKE UP, AMERICA! 877 


spend and be spent when once the day of trial has 
come; but they are merely mischievous if they 
are treated as substitutes for preparedness in ad- 
vance and for hard, efficient work and readiness 
for self-sacrifice during the crisis itself. 

We announced that we were coming to the 
help of the allies. As a matter of fact, after six 
months we owe our safety solely to the fact that 
these hard-pressed and war-worn allies protect 
us with their lives, with their trained bodies and 
perfected machines, while we fuss and talk and 
with confused hurry endeavor to get ready to do 
something. This fussy inefficiency is partly, but 
not chiefly, due to our shortcomings during these 
last six months. Primarily it is due to our fail- 
ure to prepare during the preceding two years 
and a half —the period during which such fail- 
ure to prepare was wholly inexcusable. 

It is this utter unpreparedness which should 
convey the real lesson to us of this war. And 
remember that as yet we as a people, acting 
through our governmental authorities, have not 
taken one step to avert disaster in the future by 
introducing a permanent policy of preparedness. 
By actual test the system, or rather no-system, 
upon which during the last three years we have 
been told we could rely has proved entirely worth- 
less. The measures under which we are now act- 
ing are temporary makeshifts, announced to be 
such. We have been caught utterly unprepared 
in a terrible emergency because we did nothing 
until the emergency actually arose, and now our 
government announces that what we are doing is 
purely temporary; that we shall stop doing it as 
soon as the emergency is over, and will then re- 
main equally unprepared for the next emergency. 


878 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [July 


It is this blind refusal—from the nation’s 
standpoint I can only call it the criminal refusal 
— to provide for the future that forces every hon- 
est and farsighted lover of America to speak. I 
would far rather speak words of boastful flat- 
tery to you; it is not pleasant to tell unpleasant 
truths. Probably it is personally more advan- 
tageous to utter high-sounding platitudes; but 
platitudes are not what this nation needs at this 
time. I would gladly refrain from pointing out 
shortcomings of the present and the immediate 
past were there any indication that we intended 
to provide for the future. But there is no such 
indication. And yet now is the time to formulate 
our permanent policy; now, when the lessons of 
the war are vivid before our eyes, when for the 
moment the silliness of the professional pacifists 
has less influence than in time of peace. 

The prime fact to remember is our utter help- 
lessness at this moment, six months after we 
really, four months after we nominally, went 
to war. The actual event has shown that if we 
had not been shielded by our allies, a single small 
German army of a couple of corps — or a similar 
small army of any old world military power — 
would have conquered us out of hand. When I 
say conquered, I mean conquered. Such an army 
could have been ferried across the ocean in 30 
days. In that time we could not have assembled, 
out of this whole country, an army force of 
trained soldiers to meet it; and we had not even 
a single aéroplane or a single battery of artillery 
which which to meet the hostile flying squadron 
and artillery. We would have been as easy a 
prey as Belgium, and we would have been as com- 
pletely conquered. 


1917] WAKE UP, AMERICA! 879 


We have been saved because, and only because, 
for their own purposes, our allies, the British and 
French had to protect us. But next time we may 
have no allies! Next time, if it happens that it 
is the United States which is assailed, England 
and France may remain neutral in thought and 
deed — and if they so remained neutral for even 
a fraction of the two years and a half during 
which we were neutral and if we were as un- 
prepared as at present, we would be trampled 
into the dust. We cannot afford to count for our 
safety on anything but our own armed strength; 
the only way to make our strength effective is to 
make it ready in advance; and the only way really 
to make ready in advance is to introduce the prin- 
ciple of obligatory universal military training in 
time of peace for our young men, and universal 
service in time of war for every man and woman 
in the country, in whatever position that man or 
woman can do most effective work. This is the 
only democratic system. The enjoyment of rights 
should rest on the performance of duties. Every 
privilege enjoyed, including the suffrage, should 
rest on an obligation met. Universal suffrage can 
only be justified by universal service. If a man 
is too conscientious to fight then we ought to be 
too conscientious to let him vote as to the destiny 
of a commonwealth for which brave men are 
willing to shed their blood. To make military 
service a matter of individual choice is as un- 
justifiable as to make payment of taxes or obe- 
dience to the law an individual choice. Volunteer- 
ing and the selective draft are makeshifts by 
which we impose on a few individuals the burden 
of sacrificing themselves for others who stay at 
home. 


880 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [July 


At present we must do the best we can with 
these makeshifts, because we did not have the 
wisdom to prepare in advance. But these make- 
shifts are not satisfactory. The training camps 
for officers have necessarily been open only to 
men of some means, and of a college education, or 
its equivalent. The draft is selective, which 
means that certain men will be chosen out to bear 
the burdens that ought by rights to fall on all 
alike. All we can do at the present moment is to 
work under these conditions, accepting them 
heartily and cheerfully. But for the future let 
us prepare better things, under the system of 
universal training. That every man will bear his 
just share of the common burden, and no one 
will have to bear the share of some one else. 
Under the system of universal training every 
young man will serve in the actual field, on an ex- 
act equality with every other young man; so that 
the son of the rich man and the poor man, of the 
lawyer, banker, railroad president, baker, car- 
penter, big farmer, or small farmer, will do the 
same work as every one else, eat the same fare, 
go on the same hikes, and then, at the end, among 
those willing to undergo the training for officers, 
every man will be chosen strictly on his merits, 
as actually shown in the field, without any re- 
gard to his money, or to the accident of his po- 
sition. This is the only proper way —the only 
democratic way. 

So much for our future policy. At this mo- 
ment our policy should consist in whole-heartedly 
bending our every effort to win an overwhelm- 
ing triumph in the war. We are for the time 
being safe behind the rampart of the British fleet, 
and of the French and British armies. It is gall- 


1917] WAKE UP, AMERICA! 881 


ing thus to owe our safety to others; but let us at 
least bend all our energies to developing our 
might so that in our turn we may be able to guar- 
antee safety to ourselves and triumph to our 
allies. We would not have time to develop our 
strength were it not for the protection the allies 
give us. But they dogiveit. Therefore we have 
the opportunity to make use of our gigantic re- 
sources. We can within a year, if only we 
choose, develop our strength so that we shall be 
the deciding factor in the war. If we do this we 
shall restore our self-respect, we shall incalcu- 
lably benefit our children, we shall win a 
commanding position, and we shall be able to 
render untold service to ourselves and to our 
allies. If we do not do this, if we fail to develop 
and exert our strength to the utmost, if we partly 
adopt the attitude of the onlooker, if we let others 
do the hard, rough, dangerous fighting work, then 
we shall have betrayed a sacred trust, from the 
standpoint of America, of heroic and bleeding 
France, of gallant and suffering Belgium, and of 
the world at large. In such case we must, when 
peace comes, stand humbly in the presence of the 
nations who have réally fought. In such case 
the world will have been saved, but it will have 
been saved by England, and not by us. In such 
case all that we can do will be to thank England 
for having saved the world — and the peace will 
be England’s peace. Only those who do the job 
will have a right to the reward in honor and in 
power. Only if we do play a leading part in 
bringing the war to a close can we expect to make 
the peace in part our peace. I honor England for 
all that she is doing; but I wish us to do as well, 
for otherwise we shall have no right to be more 


882 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES {July 


than a looker-on at England’s peace, at the allies’ 
peace. Only if we do our full duty can we make 
it a joint peace, a peace in which we rightfully 
have our full say, on an equality with England, 
France, Russia, Italy. If we aren’t going to do 
the job, then I shall be glad to see it done by Eng- 
land and the rest of the allies. But I am a good 
American and therefore I wish to see us do the 
job ourselves. Rhetoric and boasting won’t give 
us our place in the world. This is the hour of 
the fighting men and of the other men and the 
women who stand back of the fighting men, and 
enable them to fight. 

In order to fight effectively abroad we must 
deal with certain troubles here at home, within 
our own household. 

The first essential is an absolutely undivided 
Americanism. The events of the last three years 
have opened the eyes of all true patriots to the 
fact that any man who attempts to combine loy- 
alty to this country with loyalty to any other in- 
evitably when the strain arises, becomes disloyal 
to this country. There can be no 50-50 alle- 
giance. He who is not with us is against us. 
We must have but one flag; and we must have 
but one language — the language of the Declara- 
tion of Independence, of Washington’s farewell 
address, and of Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech. 
We must all be Americans, and nothing else. In 
this war, either a man is a good American, and 
therefore is against Germany, and in favor of 
the allies of America, or he is not an American at 
all, and should be sent back to Germany where he 
belongs. 

There are no stancher Americans in the coun- 
try than the average Americans who are in whole 


1917] WAKE UP, AMERICA! 883 


or in part of German descent; and all these are as 
stanchly against Germany now, as the Americans 
of English descent were against Great Britain in 
1776. These men stand on a full and exact 
equality with all other Americans. They are fit 
to lead or serve in our armies and to fill every 
civil position from President down. I speak of 
them with knowledge; for German blood runs in 
my own veins. 

But the American of German descent who re- 
mains a German or a half-German is not an 
American at all; and a large number of the men 
of this type are dangerous traitors who ought 
instantly to be sent out of the country. These 
men work steadily against America in the com- 
pany of the native-American, professional pacif- 
ists, and the pro-German Socialists, and all the 
anti-English foreigners. Often they dare not 
openly assail this country, and so they assail our 
allies, especially England. To assail England 
or any other of our allies at this time is to give 
aid and comfort to the public enemy and is 
therefore morally treasonable to the United 
States. Some of these pro-German and anti- 
American leaders have been advocating that men 
of German descent should not be required to serve 
in our armies against Germany. This is pre- 
cisely as if in the Revolutionary War it had been 
proposed that men of English descent should not 
serve against England. Such a proposal should 
be regarded as treasonable, and all men making 
it should be treated accordingly. 

The Cologne Gazette of June 10 brazenly de- 
clares that the ‘‘ German-Americans of the United 
State are the ‘best allies’ of Germany against 
the United States,” and rejoices in the fact that 


884 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [July 


these German-Americans “embarrass and re- 
strain” us in the war. The most prominent 
German newspapers in New York and Chicago 
have thusly deserved during the last three years 
this ominous and sinister praise. They have 
served Germany against the United States. They 
seek to embarrass and restrain our government 
so as to bring victory for Germany over the 
United States. They may have kept within the 
law, but they have been guilty of moral treason 
against the Republic. There are papers pub- 
lished in English which are just as guilty; but in 
these the treason is at least not hid in a for- 
eign language. Every German paper in the 
United States should be obliged hereafter to pub- 
lish in English, column for column, a complete 
and accurate translation of everything written in 
German. 

We can tolerate no class jealousies in this coun- 
try. I believe in organized labor, as I believe in 
organized capital, but no man is fit to take part 
in either organization unless his first loyalty is 
due to the organization which includes all of us 
to the union of all these states, to the American 
nation as a whole. Washington and Lincoln are 
our heroes. Washington was, for his day, a very 
rich man, and Lincoln a poor man; but no Amer- 
ican worth calling such holds either to the poverty 
of one or the riches of the other, as being either 
in his favor or against him. Each was moved 
by the spirit of service; each risked everything 
and was willing to give everything to render 
service to the country; and this is the spirit 
which we must demand of every man, rich or 
poor, in this country. 

No man is a good American who does not at 


1917] WAKE UP, AMERICA! 885 


this time render to the commonwealth the best 
service of which he is capable, whether as a 
farmer, a business man, or a wageworker. The 
government should exact from each the fullest 
performance of duty and in return guarantee to 
each, so far as is possible an ample reward if 
the duty is well performed. By all means fix 
prices where necessary; but let it be clearly un- 
derstood that it would be as great an evil to fix 
them too low as to permit them to rise too high. 
Guarantee to every business that does first-class 
work of any kind for the government an ample 
profit; beyond that impose a heavy progressive 
tax on excess profits ; demand that an ample wage 
be given the working men, and that in return he 
do first-class work for the first-class wage. 
Friends, fellow Americans, I preach to you the 
sword of the Lord and Gideon. In this great 
war for righteousness, we Americans have a tre- 
mendous task ahead of us. I believe the Ameri- 
can people are entirely willing to make any sacri- 
fice, and to render any service, and I believe that 
they should be explicitly shown how great the 
service is they are called upon to render, how great 
the need is that they should unflinchingly face any 
sacrifice that is made. I ask of you, and I ask of 
those who govern you— who govern this great 
mass of people —that we may be given direct 
practical lines of effort. With all my heart I be- 
lieve that our people have in them the same pa- 
triotism, the same nobility of soul to which Wash- 
ington and Lincoln were able to appeal. I ask 
that the appeal be made, the appeal for effort, 
and with it the guarantee by actual governmental 
performance that the effort shall not be wasted. 
It is through the government that we must 


886 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [July 


do the chief work of course; but let us also our- 
selves do individually each his or her own part. 
Let us help the Red Cross; let us cheerfully ac- 
cept the draft, and gladly volunteer, if we meet 
the requirements, and if we are allowed to volun- 
teer. Then in addition let each of us make up his. 
mind willingly and cheerfully to accept any per- 
sonal hardships that may come, in high taxes, in 
repeated loans and reduced income. Let us fare 
more simply, and cut out alcohol; let us show our 
eager and resolute purpose to key up the industrial 
and social life of the country to the highest scale 
of efficiency and accomplishment. We must raise 
food in abundance. We must speed up our in- 
dustries. We shall need an enormous provision 
of supplies ; we shall need much concentration and 
control of the means of production. 

If we are to hold our proper place as a great 
nation, there must be prodigious exertions on the 
part of this republic. We are in this war, and 
we must not make it a half war. The only proper 
tule is never to fight at all if you can honorably 
avoid it, but never under any circumstances to 
fight in a half hearted way. When peace comes it 
must be the peace of complete victory. In win- 
ning this victory we must have played a full part 
— the part of deeds — the deeds of fighting men. 
We should instantly strain every nerve to make 
ready millions of men, and an abundance of all 
the huge and delicate and formidable and infi- 
nitely varied instruments of modern warfare. 

We can’t achieve our ends by talk — they have 
got to be achieved by effort. We can’t achieve 
them unless we act together loyally, and with all 
our hearts; as Americans and nothing else. We 
are fighting for humanity, for the right of each 


1917] ONE FLAG AND LANGUAGE 887 


well-behaved nation to independence and to what- 
ever form of government it desires; and we are 
fighting for our own hearth stones and for the 
honor and the welfare of our children and our 
children’s children. We are fighting against a 
very efficient and powerful, and an utterly brutal 
and unscrupulous enemy. Let us give every man 
in this country his rights without regard to creed 
or birthplace, or national origin, or color. Let us 
in return exact from every man the fullest per- 
formance of duty, the fullest loyalty to our flag, 
and the most resolute effort to serve it. Let us 
face this crisis in the spirit of the men who fol- 
lowed Washington; the men whose service and 
self-sacrifice culminated in the winter at Valley 
Forge. Valley Forge was the test of the democ- 
racy of the country, the test of democracy under 
arms, the trying out of American manhood 140 
years ago. In that winter camp of misery and 
starvation our forefathers decided by their own 
steadfast valor that they were worthy to win the 
great prize of freedom. Now it is for us to 
decide, in the spirit of Washington and his follow- 
ers, in the spirit of Lincoln and Grant, and Lee, 
that we in our turn are worthy to keep and to 
enjoy the priceless heritage which our forefathers 
thus won. 


ONE FLAG AND ONE LANGUAGE 


FROM A STATEMENT ISSUED FOR PUBLICATION BY 
THE VIGILANTES ON SEPTEMBER 5, 1917 


WE are Americans and nothing else. We are 
the true children of the crucible. This is a new 


888 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [Sept. 


nation. It is a melting pot of the old world na- 
tionalities that come hither. The new type is dif- 
ferent from all other types. But the mold into 
which the crucible pours its contents was fixed in 
the days of Washington and the Revolution. All 
the children of the crucible must be loyal to the 
American tradition as established by the men of 
Washington’s day, as preserved by the men of 
Lincoln’s day. Otherwise they are not true 
Americans. Unless we come out as one people, 
and unless that people is the American people, 
true to the old ideals, then the crucible has failed 
to do its work. We must have one flag, and only 
one flag; and we must tolerate no divided loyalty. 
We must have one language, the language of the 
Declaration of Independence, of Washington’s 
farewell address, and Lincoln’s great speeches. 
While this war lasts we should not permit any 
newspaper to be published in German or in the 
tongue of any of the other nations with which 
we are at war; and laws to this effect should be 
passed at once by Congress. The leading German 
papers of this country have been scandalously dis- 
loyal to the United States and to humanity. The 
conduct of Germany in this war has been hideous 
beyond belief. The obscene cruelty and brutality 
of the German armies under the explicit direction 
of the German government has been of such un- 
speakable foulness that it is a crime against this 
nation and against all mankind directly or indi- 
rectly to uphold Germany; and all who do not 
heartily back the United States, and the allies of 
the United States, against Germany are guilty of 
this crime, and are disloyal to this country. 
Above all, any man, and especially any senator or 
congressman or editor who seeks to exempt 


1917] ONE FLAG AND LANGUAGE 889 


Americans of German descent from service in the 
army against Germany, is a traitor, pure and 
simple ; he should be proceeded against under the 
law, if possible, and if that is not possible the law 
should be amended so as to make his offense a 
crime. 

We Americans have a two-fold duty imposed 
on us by our diversity of origin. First we are 
bound to insist that every American citizen, no 
matter from what stock he comes, be loyal only 
to this country, and that in every international 
crisis he treat every other nation simply accord- 
ing to its conduct in that crisis, and wholly with- 
out regard to his ancestral origin. In the Revo- 
lution and the War of 1812 any man of English 
descent who was not against England was a 
traitor to America; and now any man of German 
descent who is not against Germany is a traitor 
whether he be outright in his attack on America 
or whether with mean indirectness and treachery 
he endeavors to hide his treachery by merely 
attacking America’s allies. Usually he attacks 
England. In this crisis the man who attacks our 
ally England is just as much a traitor to America 
as was the man in revolutionary days who at- 
tacked our ally France. And any man who now 
demands peace except the peace of complete vic- 
tory over the brutalized and Prussianized Ger- 
many of the Hohenzollerns is an enemy to this 
country and an enemy to mankind. 

Next, when men are thus entirely loyal to this 
country it is an outrage to discriminate, or permit 
discrimination against them because of where 
their fathers or they themselves were born. The 
highest honor at this time should be paid to the 
Americans in whole or in part of German blood 


890 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Sept. 


whose loyalty to the United States in this crisis 
has been whole-hearted and without reserve. 
These men are fit to hold the highest positions in 
our government from President, lieutenant gen- 
eral and admiral down. They would in such 
positions act as Americans and nothing else. 
The stanchest leaders and representatives of true 
Americanism in this crisis have included a very 
large proportion of men in whole or in part of 
‘German blood; and any failure to recognize this 
is itself a sinister attack on Americanism and a 
blow to this nation. 

In addition to insisting upon an absolutely un- 
divided Americanism we must insist upon social 
and industrial justice among our own people ; and 
this not merely in the negative sense of refraining 
from doing wrong, but by affirmative action to 
eradicate or at least to minimize wrongdoing. It 
is the business of all of us to see that the farmer 
and the wage-worker get justice, for they are the 
two men upon whose work and well-being all else 
depends. But with these men, as with all other 
men — as with each of us here, friends — the de- 
mand must be both for justice to, and justice 
from, the persons concerned. It is of no per- 
manent benefit to anybody — boy or man, girl 
or woman — to teach him or her to be everlast- 
ingly clamoring about his or her rights and never 
saying a word about the performance of duty. 
We should guarantee to every man his full rights, 
and we should exact from every man the full 
performance of his duty. We should aid the 
farmer by in every way encouraging cooperation 
between him and his fellows. If necessary, we 
should also aid him by the direct action of the 
state when necessary to secure him from exploita- 


1917] ONE FLAG AND LANGUAGE 801 


tion and to bring producer and consumer to- 
gether without paying toll to those middlemen 
who do not serve a useful purpose. But the 
proper way to help him permanently is to help 
him to help himself by cooperating with his fel- 
lows. Such codperation should not only be per- 
mitted but in every way encouraged by the gov- 
ernment, subject of course to governmental super- 
vision and control; and the same course should 
be followed as regards the business men. Co- 
operation and control should be our slogan so as 
to avoid on the one hand a single-headed, irre- 
sponsible monopoly, and on the other hand a 
system of ruinous, cut-throat competition among 
a crowd of individuals and weak concerns who 
are hurtful to each other and helpless against any 
strong outside corporation. As regards the 
workingman, our aims should steadily be to pro- 
mote all practical measures for the democratiza- 
tion of industry, for making the tool user a tool 
owner and giving him a voice in the control of 
the business in which he ought to be a partner. 
But we should set our faces like flint against slack 
or poor or scamped work; and we should deal 
relentlessly and speedily with lawlessness. We 
must hold an even hand and punish alike crimes 
of greed and cunning by the wealthy and crimes 
of brutal violence by those who are not wealthy. 
One type is as bad as the other in its effects; al- 
though morally the heavier load of blame rests 
on the man who is well off and who therefore has 
least excuse for wrongdoing. The man who 
makes a huge profit out of a war in which his 
fellow-citizens suffer and give their lives is an 
enemy of his country; and an organization like 
the I. W. W., which is playing the German game 


892 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Sept. 


in this country, and whose preaching and practice 
spell destruction to civilization, is as much an 
enemy to this country as a hostile army. The 
unscrupulous profiteers who wish to make huge 
sums out of their country’s needs, and the work- 
ingmen who refuse to do first-class work for a 
first-class wage are really the allies of our enemies 
and of course the pro-Germans, the professional 
pacifists, the men who wish an inclusive peace 
or a peace without victory, the I. W. W., the 
Socialist party machine, are not merely the 
allies of our enemies, but are themselves our ene- 
mies, 

Weare at war. Every man and woman in this 
nation is therefore bound to serve the country in 
whatever way is necessary. We should work in 
the spirit of the body of men representing the 
railroad brotherhoods whom I addressed not long 
ago in Philadelphia ; whose chairman in introduc- 
ing me said that the one purpose, now the coun- 
try was at war, was to help the country in every 
possible way, not only by making it a matter of 
pride to do their work with the utmost efficiency, 
and pending the war to insist on nothing in their 
own interest unless it was primarily in the inter- 
est of the country as a whole. The able-bodied 
young man, rich or poor, should by preference 
render such service in the army. Other men 
should render it in business or agriculture, by the 
work of food production and food conservation 
along the lines indicated by Mr. Hoover and the 
national and State officials engaged in similar 
work, by speeding up transportation, manufactur- 
ing and every other kind of business, and by pay- 
ing taxes. The taxes should be laid progressively 
on those able to pay, up to, but not beyond, the 


1917] ONE FLAG AND LANGUAGE 803 


point where the payment becomes unjust or op- 
pressive and interferes with production. 

What we and our allies at this time most need 
is maximum production and quick distribution 
of food, munitions, clothing —in short, every- 
thing. Any such restriction of profits as would 
reduce production would be a calamity. More- 
over, in many of the most important industries 
labor is the largest element of cost; in view of the 
high cost of living a reduction in wages would be 
a calamity ; and therefore profits must not be kept 
down so as to injure the ability to pay this rate 
of wages. Again, nothing should be done to up- 
set the general financial situation, for the United 
States is the last financial reservoir of the world, 
and it would be a grave calamity to upset the 
financial situation by upsetting the economic basis 
of our business. As regards certain necessities 
of life the government must certainly prevent 
owners, and especially speculators, from charging 
excessively high prices ; but it is equally important 
that the government should be cautious not to 
enforce unreasonably low prices, especially as re- 
gards what the government itself uses, and as | 
regards exports. Our ability to extend credit to 
the allies largely depends on our continuing to get 
properly full prices on exports; we should follow 
the rule that England has followed, of refusing to 
sell to our allies at less than the open market 
price. Let us help our allies primarily by a great 
army ; we can rest assured that even if they asked 
us merely to give them money and goods at half 
price and to let them do the fighting, we should 
earn their utter contempt and derision if we ac- 
quiesced. We would be in the position of a 
pawn-broker who bribes a gunman to defend him; 


804 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Sept. 


we would have put a premium on both our allies 
and our enemies ultimately joining to plunder us. 

Heavily graduated inheritance and income 
taxes are necessary. They should follow the 
English and German models. But at present 
what is most needed is a heavily —a very heavily 
— graduated tax on the excess profits due to war 
conditions; a tax as heavy as Great Britain has 
now imposed. In the purchases made by the gov- 
ernment it ought to pay prices high enough to 
enable not merely the big manufacturers, but 
their smaller and less advantageously situated 
rivals to secure a generous living profit. This 
means that the big manufacturers would have ex- 
cess profits ; and the proper way to reach these is 
by taxing them heavily. If the government fails 
to follow such action, if it follows a course of 
indecision and delay, the result will be as bad as it 
has already proved in the matter of building ships. 
Seven months ago Germany went to war with us 
because she deemed it more important to sink 
unarmed cargo and passenger ships than to keep 
our friendship. This, of course, ought to have 
shown us that our instant and prime duty was to 
nullify the threat by exerting all our wisdom and 
energy, to grappling aggressively with the sub- 
marine by building many of the big and most effi- 
cient anti-submarine cruisers, and striving to de- 
vise new methods of attack on the submarines, 
and by without the smallest delay beginning on a 
vast scale to build numbers of strong, swift steel 
cargo ships. These were almost our vital duties. 
But we shilly-shallied over them, and dawdled and 
backed and filled. We did nothing new, and very 
little that was effective in building anti-submarine 
cratt of the largest, best engined and most effect- 


19017] ONE FLAG AND LANGUAGE 895 


ive type. We didn’t take any effective steps at 
all to provide for building the cargo ship our- 
selves, and yet in at least one case we prevented a 
great firm from building the ships for one of our 
allies. The result may prove a capital misfor- 
tune; one of those misfortunes which is practi- 
cally a crime against the nation; for if during 
these seven months we had gone properly to work 
in the business of getting ships built, we would 
have had the first ships ready next month; and I 
believe that the knowledge of this fact would have 
meant to Germany the knell of doom, so far as 
her submarine campaign was concerned, and 
therefore would have made peace immediately 
probable. 

The war has clearly raised two problems; the 
problem of the present, which is to help our allies 
win this war, by endeavoring in every way now, 
to offset the effect of our utter failure to prepare 
in advance ; and the permanent problem, the prob- 
lem of defense against a future — perhaps a dis- 
tant, perhaps an immediately impending future — 
attack upon us when we have no allies ; the prob- 
lem of preparing our strength as a permanent 
policy so that never again shall we be caught as 
shamefully unprepared as now, so that never 
again shall we be forced as at present to owe our 
safety purely to the valor of our allies and not to 
our own courage and strength. 

The last is the permanently vital problem, and 
Wwe can never understand it or meet it unless we 
fully understand the pitiful condition in which 
we have been for the last seven months; a condi- 
tion due purely to our own lack of forethought 
and of steadfast resolution during the last three 
years. Now and then we read in the papers 


806 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Sept. 


boastful accounts of how much money we have 
appropriated, of how many men have been regis- 
tered for the draft, of what wonderful plans we 
intend to develop for an aéroplane fleet, of how 
many cargo ships and big guns we intend to build. 
All of this would be excellent, if we meant to pre- 
pare for a war three years hence; but it is all of 
it, every particle of it, just exactly what we ought 
to have done three years ago, or at the very least 
two years and a half ago, when the Lusitania was 
sunk — for we had exactly the same cause for ac- 
tion then that we have now. Seven months have 
passed since the German note of January 31 last, 
which was in effect a declaration of war. This 
is a longer time than it took Germany to conquer 
France in 1870. And when you read anything 
boastful about what we have done during these 
seven months, remember what our accomplish- 
ment — not belated preparation, but actual ac- 
complishment — really is. We have put a few 
anti-submarine craft into European waters under 
Admiral Sims; and that is all! We have in train- 
ing camps in France gallant Gen. Pershing and his 
fine divisions of infantry, his engineers, and his 
artillery regiments without guns. We have sey- 
eral hundred thousand National Guardsmen about 
to begin training in camp; and several hundred 
thousand drafted men are preparing to go to 
camp. We have not yet been able to put in 
France any heavy field guns fit to match the 
German artillery. We have not yet a single air- 
plane fit to send over the German lines. We have 
not put a single man into the firing line. We 
have only what is relatively to the size of the 
armies engaged, a small body of infantry, without 
artillery, who will be fit to go to the firing line in 


1917] ONE FLAG AND LANGUAGE 807 


the immediate future. As for the rest, after 
seven months, this nation of a hundred millions 
of people, the wealthiest nation in the world, able 
to work without any danger behind the shield of 
the British fleet and the French and British 
armies, has neither the trained troops nor the 
guns nor the air craft to meet even a single small 
German army if it could get at us. After these 
seven months we are still nothing like as formid- 
able as Belgium or Rumania. Under such con- 
ditions boasters would do well to remember the 
remark of Thangbrand, the priest, about the 
boastful Icelanders, in the Norse saga: 


“ What’s the use 
Of all this bragging up and down 
When three women and one goose 
Make a market in your town.” 


I do not mention this for the sake of criticizing 
any one. I mention it so that we may take warn- 
ing and never again be guilty of such shameful 
shortcomings. There is no use of crying over 
spilt milk; but there is far less use of making be- 
lieve that it has not been spilt. Let us make up 
our minds, we Americans, hereafter to behave 
like men and to quit acting like spoiled, over- 
grown children. Children don’t have fore- 
thought. Men do. Let us make ready in ad- 
vance so that hereafter we may owe our safety to 
our own prepared strength and trained courage. 
There is but one way thus to prepare and that is 
by introducing as a permanent policy the policy 
of universal obligatory military training, for all 
our young men in time of peace, and of universal 
service in time of war, so that every man and 


808 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Sept. 


woman in this country shall be fitted in advance 
to render, and at need required to render, what- 
ever service the nation demands. Then we won’t 
have to begin to train for a fight after the fight 
has itself begun. The law of service should be 
the law of life; and in every real democracy uni- 
versal suffrage will be based on universal service. 

So much for our ultimate and permanent need. 
The immediate need is to bring this war to a 
close by complete and overwhelming victory. 
We must strive for the peace of victory as in their 
day our forefathers strove. As yet we count for 
almost nothing in the war; but sooner or later — 
I hope within six months or so—we shall de- 
velop our tremendous strength, and then let us 
see the war through. Hitherto the allies have 
been fighting our battles, as an incident to fighting 
theirs, and, of course, because their interest de- 
manded it. Now let us fight our own battles; 
thereby we shall also fight theirs. We are fight- 
ing for humanity; but primarily we are fighting 
for our own country, for the safety of America 
in the world. We are fighting on the other side 
of the water so that we may not have to fight on 
this side of the water. Only the overthrow of 
the brutal and unscrupulous militarism of the 
Prussianized Germany of the Hohenzollerns will 
make this world safe either for the United States 
or for democracy. Let us bend our whole ener- 
gies towards this end. Let us resolve that if all 
our allies should slip away from us we would 
nevertheless continue the war single-handed until 
the end is attained. Let us heartily back up the 
government in every wise step it takes for the 
speedy achievement of this end; but let us, as 
patriots, not less clearly emphasize the fact that 


1917] TO SAVE OURSELVES AND OTHERS 899 


we demand from our government wisdom, energy 
and a spirit of broad Americanism and a patriotic 
absence of partisanship in thus prosecuting the 
war. Let us furthermore each as individuals do 
all we severally can to aid in securing the triumph. 
Let us live simply, cut out all extravagance and all 
alcohol, show thrift, avoid waste, and do every bit 
of productive work we can, in agriculture or in- 
dustry, in producing food, or clothing, or muni- 
tions, or in managing the transportation of the 
country. Let us cheerfully pay our increased 
taxes, subscribe to government loans, help the Red 
Cross and Y. M. C. A. and all similar organiza- 
tions which are trying to aid our soldiers. So far 
as our bodily strength and condition permit let us 
serve with our bodies. If we are permitted let us 
volunteer in the army or the navy; if we are 
drafted let us treat the fact as a great privilege. 
Service should be the law of life, and thrice 
blessed is that man who in this world crisis is 
granted the supreme good fortune of risking his 
life and all else that he has for the honor of serv- 
ing his country and mankind. 


HOW TO SAVE OURSELVES BY 
SAVING OTHERS 


FROM AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE WORKING- 
MEN’S RED CROSS SUNDAY CELEBRATION AT 
JOHNSTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA, ON SEPTEMBER 


30, 1917 


I TAKE not merely peculiar pleasure but pecul- 
iar pride in coming to Johnstown as the invited 
guest of the various local organizations, who 


900 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [Sept. 


have joined in making this the Red Cross Sun- 
day. I feel that this war is not only essentially 
America’s war, but also a war to make measure- 
ably good, at least for large portions of the earth, 
Lincoln’s doctrine of a government for the peo-. 
ple, by the people and of the people. Therefore, 
it is as emphatically a war primarily in the inter- 
est of the working people, as the war for the 
preservation of the Union itself. It was not pos- 
sible that the man who himself works with his 
hands, whether as a farmer or on the railroad, or 
in a shop or factory could permanently prosper 
or even exist in a country which tolerated black 
slavery, and this Abraham Lincoln clearly saw. 
In just the same way it is not possible that the 
working men, and the farmers who till the soil 
they themselves own, can permanently enjoy 
political freedom and the right to rule their own 
destinies in their own country in a world which 
is dominated by Prussian militarism. Remember 
that the essential part of Lincoln’s statement was 
that this should be a government by the people, 
and not merely a government of the people and 
for the people. Every government is of course 
a government of the people. This is just as true 
of a despotism as it is true of a democracy. 
Again there have often been despotisms or autoc- 
racies which for a greater or less length of time 
have handled their government for the people. 
But it is only in a free country that the govern- 
ment is by the people. Bismarck’s oft-repeated 
saying was that “ Everything should be done for 
the people and nothing by them.” We feel that 
not only everything should be done for them but 
by them. We hold that Bismarck’s, or the Prus- 
sian theory inevitably in the end means that inas- 


1917] TO SAVE OURSELVES AND OTHERS og01 


much as nothing is done by the people, less and 
less will be done for them. Every man in this 
country believes in the American doctrines for 
which our fathers and fore-fathers struggled, and 
often laid down their lives, must see that the dif- 
ference between us and our allies the other free 
peoples on the one side, and the Prussianized Ger- 
many of the Hohenzollerns on the other, is 
an absolutely fundamental difference. Germany 
sees this clearly. If this war ends in a German 
victory or a stalemate we can count with absolute 
certainty upon Germany at her own time striking 
down this republic, for she rightly feels that our 
existence is incompatible with the safety of that 
spirit of despotic autocracy which she embodies 
to-day more than any other nation in the whole 
world. 

Of course we went to war purely because we 
had a special grievance against Germany. We 
did not go to war to make democracy safe, and we 
did go to war because we had a special grievance. 
We went to war because after two years, during 
which with utter contempt of our protests, she 
had habitually and continually murdered our non- 
combatant men, women and children on the high 
seas, Germany formally announced that she in- 
tended to pursue this course more ruthlessly and 
vigorously than ever. This was our special 
grievance—the special grievance because of 
which we went to war, and it was far more than 
an empty justification for going to war. As you 
know, my own belief is that we should have 
acted immediately after the sinking of the Lusi- 
tania. But in any event, no self-respecting Amer- 
ican can doubt that we had to act when we did act. 
The man who is not willing to see his nation fight 


902 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [Sept. 


when its men and women are habitually killed 
by the order of the government of another nation, 
stands on a level with the man who will peace- 
fully submit to having his wife’s face slapped and 
his children kidnaped by a black-hander. The 
man who submits tamely to such private outrages 
is unfit to associate with decent people, and the 
nation that submits tamely to such private out- 
rages forfeits all right to the respect of its own 
citizens or of other nations. 

In our school books we read of the wrongs 
committed by George III, and the English of his 
days on our revolutionary ancestors, and we 
rightly applaud the conduct of those revolution- 
ary ancestors in following Washington and stand- 
ing for our rights, at the expense of war. But 
King George and the English of his day never 
committed against us crimes which in any way 
compare with the atrocities that have been com- 
mitted against us during the last two and one- 
half years by the German government, acting 
through its diplomatic and military agents, and 
with the full approval of the German people. 
We not only had a special grievance against Ger- 
many, because of which we went to war, but this 
grievance is of the very gravest character, so 
grave that we would have rendered ourselves 
infamous had we declined to go to war. But, in 
addition, it was imperatively necessary that we go 
to war on behalf of outraged humanity. 

I wish every one in this nation would read the 
sermons now being delivered by the Rev. Newell 
Dwight Hillis, pastor of the Plymouth church, 
Brooklyn. Dr. Hillis is one of the most high- 
minded men in this country, and he possesses a 
singularly accurate mind. He abhors injustice 


1917] TO SAVE OURSELVES AND OTHERS 903 


or wanton war. Nobody could ever make Dr. 
Hillis support this country in going into an un- 
righteous war. But much though he loves peace, 
he loves honor and justice and mercy and self- 
respect and national rectitude even more than he 
loves peace. He has recently been on the other 
side and he looked at the affidavits and photo- 
graphs, the legal proofs that, as he said, make the 
German atrocities committed in France and Bel- 
gium, and in their air raids on England far better 
established than the crimes of the Sioux Indians 
on our western frontier, the murders of the Black 
Hole of Calcutta, or the hideous infamies com- 
mitted three centuries ago in the dreadful wars 
of religion. He has seen himself, as I have said, 
the countless photographs of dead and mutilated 
girls, children and old men. He has read some 
of the countless affdavits describing cruelties and 
brutality, which literally make the heart sick. 
Germany has reduced savagery to a science, and 
this great war for the victorious peace of justice 
must go on until the German cancer is cut clean 
out of the world body. There are official records 
of more than 10,000 separate atrocities committed 
by the German armies, not sporadically, but as a 
part of the deliberate plan of “ schrecklichkeit ” 
of horror upon which the German government has 
counted. 

In a recent letter from Dr. Hillis he says: 
“For weeks the Germans on the eastern front 
have been gas-bombing and driving the children 
and women back through the French lines. The 
prefect, Governor Mirman, of Nancy, showed me 
2,500 children and women that he had brought 
into his town, and there are not less than 50,000 
of these orphans, half orphans and aged women, 


904 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Sept. 


who have suddenly and quite unexpectedly been 
thrust upon the villages south of the Verdun line. 
These poor children represent France’s supreme 
need and America’s supreme opportunity. They 
must be saved to-day, or there will be no France 
of to-morrow.” 

The conditions thus authoritatively described 
by an unimpeachable witness should wake every 
man and woman in America to the need of trying 
to help the tortured people of Belgium and 
France. Your committees here in Johnstown 
should get in touch with Dr. Hillis and follow 
his advice as to how to proceed, and you should 
of course back up the Red Cross in every way. 
France and Belgium together with England have 
been fighting our battle as surely as they have 
been fighting their own. The Prussianized Ger- 
many of the Hohenzollerns is seeking world do- 
minion. It has shown ruthless treachery and 
brutality. Its course for three years has proved 
that it wants only the opportunity to strike down 
and plunder any power not able by military force 
to resist its attacks. In trying to save themselves, 
France and England and poor little Belgium have 
saved us; for this wealthy and helplessly unpre- 
pared nation would have been an easy and most 
desirable victim for Germany if it had not been 
for the allied fleets and armies which for three 
years have stood between us and ruin. During 
these years of ease our wealth has grown; and 
all of us should give what we can to help the 
wretched victims who have suffered such intoler- 
able wrongs in France and Belgium. 

But this is not enough. Merely to help the 
sorely stricken does not meet the situation. We 
must punish the aggressor in such fashion that 


1917] TO SAVE OURSELVES AND OTHERS 905 


never again will there be a repetition of wrongdo- 
ing as Germany has. committed in this war. 
Never again must we be put in such an ignoble 
position as to owe our safety only to others. 
Next time it may not pay other nations to save 
us from the effects of our folly. Uncle Sam must 
hereafter prepare his strength so that he himself 
can guarantee his own safety against any foreign 
foe. We have gone to war because Germany had, 
during two years, committed upon us outrages 
to which no self-respecting or manly nation could 
endure. We shall fight in Europe so as to save 
ourselves or our children from the necessity of 
fighting on our own continent against alien con- 
querors. We are also fighting the battle of 
liberty-loving, self-respecting, decently behaved 
nations of mankind. We must back up the Red 
Cross and all similar organizations in every way 
possible. But we must remember that our first 
duty is to develop to the limit our military 
strength. Everything else is of secondary impor- 
tance to this. If we of this great democratic re- 
public do not show that we are able to defend 
ourselves by our own might, if we do not teach 
Germany that she cannot commit acts of insolent 
brutality at our expense without being called to 
account, we will lay up either for ourselves or for 
our children a future of shame and disaster. 


9066 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [March 


SPEED UP THE WAR AND TAKE 
THOUGHT FOR AFTER THE WAR 


FROM A SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE MAINE CON- 
VENTION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY ON MARCH 
28, 1918 


THIS country is now involved in the greatest 
war of all time. In common with the rest of the 
world it is passing through one of those tremen- 
dous crises which lie centuries apart in world 
history. Under such conditions the question of 
partisanship sinks into utter insignificance com- 
pared with the great question of patriotism, com- 
pared with the duty of all of us to act with stern 
and whole-hearted loyalty to this mighty republic, 
and to serve the interests of the republic and the 
ideals which make the republic the hope of the 
future of mankind. I come before you Repub- 
licans of Maine to speak only as an American to 
his fellow Americans, as a patriot speaking to 
patriots. I make my appeal only in the interest 
of patriotism. In other words, I make precisely 
such an appeal as I should have made here in 
Maine 55 years ago, in the days of the Civil War. 
We stand for the nation now as Lincoln stood for 
the nation then. We stand against Germany now 
as he stood against slavery then. In those days 
the men who demanded peace or kept demanding 
conferences to talk about peace were the foes of 
the Union and of liberty. To-day they are the 
foes of liberty and civilization. There is but one 
way to get a righteous and lasting peace and that 
is to beat Germany to her knees. Let us refuse 
to go into a joint debate on peace with the Pots- 


1918] SPEED UP THE WAR 907 


dam people. Let us take our stand on that part 
of the President’s speech of December in which 
he said, “ This intolerable thing, this menace of 
combined intrigue and force, which we now see 
so clearly as the German power, a thing without 
conscience or honor or capacity for covenanted 
peace, must be crushed;” and let us forget the 
peace parleyings of February; for these were in- 
consistent with the words just quoted. 

The Republicans of Maine and the Republicans 
of the nation generally have in this crisis subordi- 
nated all other questions to their devotion to the 
nation. Not in all our history has any political 
party when in opposition shown as fine, as whole- 
hearted and as completely disinterested patriotism 
as has been shown by the Republican party, espe- 
cially by its representatives in the Senate and Con- 
gress of the United States during the year and 
two months now closing. Their devotion has 
been to the interests of America. They have 
sought to serve their party only by making it serve 
America; and they have realized that by serving 
America they could best serve the free nations of 
mankind. There have been a few exceptions, 
but as a whole the record of the Republicans in 
Congress during this period entitled them to the 
support of all the people of the United States who 
put patriotism and service and undivided loyalty 
to the country before all other\considerations at 
this time. They have resisted all temptations to 
seek partisan advantage at the expense of the 
country ; indeed, their only failing has been a re- 
luctance to do what ought to be done, if the doing 
of it might lead even to untruthful charges of 
partisanship. Such a record is unique, not 
merely in our history, but so far as I know in the 


908 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [March 


history of any other nation with representative 
government in a crisis like this. 

The Republicans, as soon as on January 31, 
1917, Germany practically declared war upon us, 
abandoned instantly all thought of partisanship 
and from that moment rendered zealous service 
to the whole people, and to the administration at 
every point where it represented the whole people. 
In every important matter vital to the successful 
prosecution of the war, it is an actual fact that 
on the whole the Republicans furnished a larger 
proportion of supporters for the administration’s 
policies than were furnished by the Congress as a 
whole. 

In consequence of this attitude the record of 
Congress during this year and two months has 
been one of unparalleled service to the country. 
There have been during this period very grave 
faults and shortcomings and delays in govern- 
mental work. But they were not due to the action 
of Congress; and the action of the Republicans 
in Congress was consistently designed to correct 
them, and was sometimes successful in securing 
at least their partial correction. I believe that 
the people of our country recognize this faithful 
stewardship of their interests. 

We are pledged to the hilt as a nation to put 
this war through without flinching until we win 
the peace of overwhelming victory. We owe this 
to our own honor and to our future well-being. 
We owe it to the liberty-loving peoples of man- 
kind. We are pledged to secure for each well- 
behaved nation the right to control its own des- 
tinies and to live undominated and unharmed by 
others so long as it does not harm others. 

This is the people’s war. It is not the Presi- 


1918] SPEED UP THE WAR 909 


dent’s war. It is not Congress’ war. It is the 
war of the people of the United States for the 
honor and welfare of America and of mankind. 
It is the bounden duty of the Republican party 
to support every public servant, from the Presi- 
dent down, insofar as he does good and efficient 
work in waging the war or helping wage the war, 
and to oppose him exactly to the extent of his 
failure to do such work; for our loyalty is to the 
people of the United States, and to every public 
servant in exact accordance with the way in which 
he serves the public. It is the duty of the Re- 
publican party to stand like a rock against ineffi- 
ciency, incompetence, hesitation and delay no less 
than against any lukewarmness in serving the 
common cause of ourselves and our allies. Sixty 
odd years ago Abraham Lincoln set our duty be- 
fore us when he said: “ Stand with anybody that 
stands right. Stand with him while he is right 
and part with him when he goes wrong. In both 
cases you are right. To desert such ground is 
to be less than a man, less than an American.” 
Just as it is our duty to support every public 
servant who goes right, it is our equally emphatic 
duty fearlessly to oppose him when he goes 
wrong, and therefore to tell the exact truth about 
him whether he is right or whether he is wrong. 
To support a public servant who does wrong is 
as profoundly unpatriotic as to oppose a public 
servant who does right. To take any other posi- 
tion is to show a servile mind. Whoever takes 
any other position shows that he is not fit to be a 
free man ina free land. The public servant who 
does not approve such a position is not seeking 
to be the servant of the people, but the master of 
the people. 


910 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [March 


We are in this war because of special and in- 
tolerable grievance against Germany; because in 
addition to many other misdeeds she for two 
years followed a course of deliberate murder of 
our unarmed and unoffending citizens, men, 
women and children; because her continuous and 
contemptuous maltreatment of our country ren- 
dered it imperative for us to go to war in order 
to ensure our future safety against such mal- 
treatment by any foreign nation. Our first duty 
is to beat down Germany in order to save our- 
_ selves and our belongings, in order to save our 
women and our children and our homes. We 
fight for the future of our own dear land, but we 
are also in the war because in common with all 
civilized mankind we have been outraged by Ger- 
many’s callous and cynical brutalities against well- 
behaved weaker nations. This is a war on be- 
half of treaties as against scraps of paper; for 
the freedom of the sea against world enslavement 
(for Germany has been the real foe of freedom 
of the seas) ; it is a war on behalf of small well- 
behaved nations against the domineering and in- 
finitely cruel arrogance of the brutal and scientific 
German militarism; a war for helpless Women 
and children against murderers; a war for civil- 
ization against barbarism, honor against infamy, 
right against wrong; a war against the powers of 
darkness, of death and of hell. As for our own 
special grievance it is far more serious than any 
grievance for which ever before we had to fight 
a foreign foe. Germany has wronged us far 
more seriously than Great Britain wronged us 
during the years that led up to our Declaration of 
Independence. No man can advocate submission 
to Germany now without proving false to the 


1918] SPEED UP THE WAR OIt 


spirit of the men of 1776. Germany has waged 
war with utter faithlessness and with inhuman 
cruelty. The black infamy of her conduct to- 
ward Belgium has no parallel in civilized history 
since the close of the dreadful wars of religion 
in the seventeenth century. Austria, Bulgaria 
and Turkey have been her vassal states. Turkey 
has behaved toward the Armenian and Syrian 
Christians and toward the Jews in her dominions 
and toward the Arabs with an even more revolt- 
ing cruelty than Germany herself has shown. 
Unless we war on Turkey precisely as we war on 
Germany, we show that we are insincere when we 
say that we wish to make the world safe for de- 
mocracy. Nor can we keep our promise to make 
the world safe for democracy unless the subject 
races in Austria are given a real and not a nominal 
freedom. We are bound as a nation now to re- 
member that fine phrases, that bold and lofty 
declarations of purpose, are of worth only as they 
are turned into brave deeds by men who are both 
strong and true. Rhetoric which is not made 
good, rhetoric which has in it any element of hy- 
pocrisy and insincerity is an evil and not a desir- 
able thing. Let us keep steadfastly in mind St. 
Paul’s warning when he bade the Romans beware 
of those who “by good words and fair speeches 
deceive the hearts of the simple.” We of this na- 
tion must now prove our truth by our endeavor. 
We cannot with honor accept any inconclusive 
peace. Our aim is to beat Germany and the allies 
of Germany, and we cannot abandon a single one 
of our allies, as long as that ally is true to the 
common cause. 

The events of the past three and a half years 
have brought home to us in startling fashion the 


912 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [March 


truth that in this country the man who is not 
wholly American and nothing but American is a 
traitor to America. There can be no such thing 
as a fifty-fifty allegiance. There are no better 
Americans in this land than the Americans of 
German blood, who are Americans and nothing 
else. It is a shame and a disgrace not to treat 
these men precisely as all other Americans are 
treated. They are fit to serve in our armies in 
any position from the major-general down; they 
are fit to hold any position in civil life from presi- 
dent down. But the men of German blood who 
have tried to be both Germans and Americans are 
not Americans at all, but traitors to America and 
tools and servants of Germany against America. 
Organizations like the German-American Alliance 
have served Germany against America. Here- 
after we must see that the melting pot really does 
melt. There should be but one language in this 
country, the English language. We require of 
all immigrants who come hither to become citizens 
that they shall specifically forswear allegiance to 
the land from which they came, as well as swear 
allegiance to this land. Hereafter we must see to 
it that this oath is observed in spirit as well as in 
letter ; and that the men born here, of whatever 
blood, and whether their ancestors have lived in 
this land for generations or came here from some 
foreign land, are brought up as Americans and as 
nothing else, speaking as their own tongue the 
speech of Washington and Lincoln, and knowing 
loyalty to but one flag, the flag that floats over our 
armies now, the flag that was carried by our 
fathers when in their days the storm of war blew 
over the land, the flag that was borne by their 


1918] SPEED UP THE WAR 913 


fathers’ fathers up the red heights of danger to 
the summits of glory and honor. 

If we are men and not children, if we have the 
rignt stuff of manhood in us, we will look facts 
in the face, however ugly they be, and profit by 
them. We must face the fact of our shameful 
unpreparedness before this war, and of the ineffi- 
ciency with which for the first year and two 
months this war has been waged by us. Many 
of our State governments have done extraor- 
dinarily good work; but the mismanagement at 
Washington has been such as to cause all good 
patriots grave concern. The policy of unpre- 
paredness, of watchful waiting, has borne most 
evil fruit. For two and a half years before we 
drifted stern foremost into the war we were given 
such warning as never before in history was given 
a great nation. Yet we failed in the smallest de- 
gree to profit by the warning, and we drifted into 
war unarmed and helpless, without having taken 
the smallest step to harden our huge but soft and 
lazy strength. In consequence, although over a 
year has passed, we are still in a military sense 
impotent to render real aid to the allies or be a 
real menace to Germany. Had we done our plain 
duty and prepared in advance we probably would 
not have had to go to war at all, and certainly 
would have ended the war almost as soon as we 
entered it. If we had even begun seriously to 
fight last September Russia would probably not 
have been broken, and victory would now be in 
sight. Von Hindenburg and von Tirpitz were 
reported as saying when we went to war that we 
would be a negligible factor in the military situa- 
tion for 18 months. Fourteen months have since 


914 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [March 


gone by, and for these 14 months the facts have 
borne out their prophecy. We utterly failed in 
our duty to build without an hour’s delay a great 
fleet of cargo ships. We have put a gallant little 
army on the other side, but it was a very small 
army and entirely unequipped for modern war. 
After 14 months this great and wealthy nation has 
only been able to put in the field an army less 
numerous than poor, wrecked Belgium or ruined 
Servia has in the field, an army but little more 
numerous than Portugal has sent to the front. 
Nor is this all — we had to send that army abroad 
absolutely unequipped with the special weapons 
of modern warfare. No army can take the field 
nowadays without abundance of field artillery, of 
autorifles and airplanes. Yet we have not as yet 
been able to put any field guns, but a negligible 
number of autorifles, not any aéroplanes of our 
own into action; and we had only an insufficient 
number of rifles and of heavy siege or fortress 
guns. We have had to get from our hard-pressed 
allies, from the war-torn nations, to whose help 
we nominally came, weapons with which we could 
fight our own battles. We have been able to pre- 
pare at all during the year and a quarter that has 
passed only because England and France pro- 
tected us with their ships and with the bodies of 
their brave sons. Even yet our men at the front 
form but a tiny fraction of the allies’ army; and 
even this tiny fraction can serve at the front at 
all only because our hard-pressed allies give us 
the weapons of war without which we could not 
wage war at all. With our immense wealth and 
individual energy, I believe that in spite of gov- 
ernmental blundering we shall soon get into better 
position. But hitherto, for nearly a year and a 


1918] SPEED UP THE WAR 915 


quarter, this has been our position. It is an ig- 
noble position. No true American can be con- 
tent to have us hold such a position and least of 
all can he be content to have us attempt to cover 
it by untruthful boasting. 

Our failure has been due in part to grave in- 
competence since Germany forced. us into war. 
But primarily it is due to our utter folly in fail- 
ing to prepare during the preceding two and a 
half years, when the warning was written across 
the whole horizon in letters of blood and of fire. 
Our first business now is to put through the war, 
and therefore to speed up the war. Make our 
effort in ships, men, guns, airplanes felt abroad 
at the earliest possible moment. Let us realize 
the grim truth that unless our men now fight tri- 
umphantly beside our allies, some day or other 
we shall have to fight at home, despairingly and 
without allies. Our resources are so immense 
that in the end we shall begin to count in spite of 
all our governmental shortcomings ; but as long as 
we think of the war as 3,000 miles away, and as 
long as some of the most importan: divisions of 
the executive branch of the government continue 
almost chemically pure of efficient organization, 
our strength will be exerted at a terrible disad- 
vantage. War is won by brains and steel, not by 
kid gloves and fine phrases. 

Let us begin to do our immediate duty by both 
speeding up the war and making ready the ships 
and the men necessary to win no matter how long 
the war takes. Let the ships be built by working 
night and day, three shifts in the 24 hours. Let 
us prepare for a three years’ war and begin now 
to make ready an army of five million men (and 
the best way to begin is to introduce at once uni- 


916 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [March 


versal military training for all our young men 
between 19 and 21, it being understood that they 
will not go to war until they are 21). All our 
other activities in making arms, ammunition, air- 
planes and other war machines can be made to 
synchronize with this. 

Our next duty, a duty the performance of which 
should begin at this moment, is to introduce the 
policy of permanent preparedness. Never again 
must we be caught so utterly unprepared as we 
have been caught this time. For myself, person- 
ally, I hold that there is but one efficient method, 
and that is to introduce as our permanent national 
policy the principle of basing manhood suffrage 
on manhood service ; on universal service in peace 
and universal service in war; and therefore on 
the military training of all our young men in time 
of peace so that they may be ready if the nation 
calls to perform the tasks of war. If ye do not 
work ye shall not eat! And the man who is not 
prepared and willing to defend his country in time 
of war is not fit to help manage her affairs either 
in time of peace or in time of war. Such prepar- 
ation would not invite war. On the contrary it 
would be the surest guarantee against war. 
Switzerland is the most democratic of all Repub- 
lics; she has been free from foreign war for a 
century ; although in the center of the maelstrom 
she has kept out of this war; and she owes her 
immunity from war solely to the fact that all her 
citizens were trained to be soldiers while peace 
still existed ; that she prepared in advance against 
war, instead of confusedly trying to prepare after 
war had begun. 

For nearly two and a half years before this 
war came the professional pacifists, and every 


1918] SPEED UP THE WAR O17 


politician who wished to cater to the pacifist vote 
and to get the support of easy-going, pleasure- 
loving materialists, and of sordid money-getting 
materialists, kept assuring us that if we would 
only keep unprepared we would keep out of war. 
Well, we tried the experiment. We kept unpre- 
pared. And we got into war. The pacifists did 
not keep us out of the war. They got us into 
war. They merely kept us unprepared to do our 
instant duty in the war. 

And friends, be on your guard against these 
same apostles of weakness and folly when peace 
comes. They will then tell you that this is the 
last great war. Less than four years ago these 
same men were telling you that no great war 
could ever again happen. They will tell you that 
to keep unprepared is to avoid war. Well, that’s 
just what they told you for two and a half years 
after the great war broke out, and you see for 
yourselves the result. They will tell you that 
they can make paper treaties and agreements and 
guarantees by which brutal and unscrupulous men 
will have their souls so softened that weak and 
timid men won’t have anything to fear and that 
brave and honest men won’t have to prepare to 
detend themselves. Well, we have seen that all 
such treaties are worth less than scraps of paper 
when it becomes to the interest of powerful and 
ruthless militarist nations to disregard them. In 
our own country just prior to the outbreak of the 
great war, and for some months after the war, 
our government, through the state department, 
was busy signing dozens of ridiculous little peace 
treaties and in solemnly giving to the signers small 
metal plowshares made of condemned cavalry 
sabers. And this ludicrous monkey-work went 


918 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [March 


on at the very time that Germany had trampled 
Belgium and Northern France and Servia into 
bloody mire, and when those engaged in the fatu- 
ous work owed their safety at that very moment 
only to the fact that the English and French fleets 
and armies held back Germany from world do- 
minion. After the war is over all these foolish 
pacifist creatures will again raise their piping 
voices against preparedness and in favor of patent 
devices for maintaining peace without effort. 
Let our people be on their guard against them. 
(Let us enter into every reasonable agreement 
which bids fair to minimize the chances of war 
and to circumscribe the area of war; but let us 
remember that all such agreements when tested 
will prove what the German chancellor called 
them, “scraps of paper,” unless back of them lies 
the resolute strength of a nation which loves 
peace, but which loves righteousness more than 
peace, and which has prepared in advance to de- 
fend its rights. Let us enter into the treaties by 
all means, merely taking care not to promise any- 
thing we cannot and do not seriously intend to 
perform. But let us also remember that it is a 
hundred times more important for us to prepare 
our strength for our own defense than to enter 
into any of these peace treaties; and that if we 
thus prepare our strength for our own defense 
we shall minimize the chances of war as no paper 
treaties can possibly minimize them; and we shall 
thus make our views effective for peace and jus- 
tice in the world at large as in no other way they 
can be made effective. 

Friends, it is not only our duty to be prepared 
against war. It is if possible even more our duty 
to prepare for peace. And we are almost as un- 


1918] SPEED UP THE WAR 919 


prepared in one respect as the other. Moreover, 
m the affairs of peace, as in the affairs of war, let 
us as grown men, as serious citizens of a great 
republic, impatiently brush aside the silly sham- 
trust in rhetoric as a substitute for action. It is, 
I suppose, a besetting sin of all mankind, and cer- 
tainly of mankind as we see it around us, always 
to endeavor to hide ugly action, or ugly inaction, 
behind a cloak of lofty-sounding sentimentality, 
and to endeavor to justify and atone for the re- 
fusal to look ugly truths in the face by using fine 
phrases as an anodyne for a partially aroused 
conscience. 

We cannot afford any longer to continue our 
present industrial and social system, or rather no- 
system of every-man-for-himself and devil-take- 
the-hindmost. We cannot any longer afford to 
cover our inaction by Fourth of July oratory in 
praise to ourselves. Least of all can we afford 
to accept sham remedies which would merely 
make our condition worse instead of better. 
What is needed is to fix definite ideals and then to 
try to realize them by deeds; to endeavor prac- 
tically and cautiously but resolutely by the actual 
service test, by actual experiment to find out just 
how to translate these ideals into working actu- 
alities ; and therefore to understand the necessity 
of refusing to accept glittering half truths and of 
painfully endeavoring to reduce real truths to 
action. That great citizen of Maine, the late 
Tom Reed, used to be fond of saying that nothing 
was easier to formulate, nothing more attractive 
to shallow-thinking persons, and nothing more 
mischievous when reduced to action, than a half 
truth ; whereas a whole truth is always one of the 
most difficult things to state and one of the most 


920 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [March 


difficult things actually to reduce to action, while 
nevertheless it is indispensable that it should be 
so reduced. 

It is our business as a nation seriously to face 
our industrial conditions, to realize that we cannot 
without folly permit them to go on unchanged, 
and yet that we are worse than fools if we permit 
them to be changed for evil. Therefore we must 
shun equally the bourbon reactionaries who in- 
vite disaster by refusing to face and grapple with 
the needs of the hour, and the sinister dema- 
gogues and loose-minded visionaries who preach 
a red folly that would bring us to even worse dis- 
aster. It will not help us in the least to have 
avoided Scylla if we land on Charybdis. Unless 
we sail equally far from both we shall sooner or 
later be wrecked. 

The great Russian commonwealth offers a 
lamentable example of the effect of following the 
opposite course and of vibrating between the 
tyranny of an autocracy and the tyranny of a 
mob. The autocracy of the Romanoffs united 
extreme incapacity with complete despotism. It 
could not permanently control the people and it 
kept them utterly unfit to control themselves. It 
was overthrown. After seething tumult the 
Bolsheviki came to the fore. We can all sympa- 
thize with the well-meaning, ignorant men whose 
past pitifully forbade their acting with wisdom 
in the present and who were therefore ready- 
made followers of the Bolshevist leaders. But 
our sympathy must not blind us to the fact that 
these leaders led them into the abyss. The Bol- 
sheviki have no more to teach America than the 
Romanoffs themselves. The Romanoffs an- 
nounced that they stood for order and in the long 


1918] SPEED UP THE WAR 921 


run they proved the most fatal enemies of order. 
The Bolsheviki announced that they stood for 
liberty, and during the last six months they have 
been, with the exception of the autocracy of the 
Hohenzollerns, the most dangerous of all the ene- 
mies of liberty. In international matters they 
proved false to all liberty-loving nations, and they 
betrayed their own country, and sought to betray 
all the free nations, into the hands of Germany. 
They were first the tools and allies, and then 
the dupes and victims, of Prussian militarism. 
Within their own boundaries they have brought 
Russia to the verge of complete dissolution. 
Their government was a squalid despotism. 
They trampled freedom under foot. They were 
no less the enemies of human rights than of prop- 
erty rights. There is in this country just as little 
room for the analogues of the Bolsheviki as there 
is for the analogues of the Romanoffs. If we are 
wise we shall not permit ourselves to be withheld 
from a forward movement by the Romanoffs 
or our own social and industrial system, and 
neither shall we permit ourselves to be plunged 
into the abyss of fathomless disaster into which 
we would be plunged if we followed the Ameri- 
can Bolsheviki. 

I am not blind to the fact that there must be 
a proper moral standard or no material success 
will avail. But it is just as true that there must 
be a basis of material, of economic justice and 
well-being or no high moral standard can perma- 
nently be maintained. This standard of economic 
well-being can only exist if we use the govern- 
ment to secure a high degree of individual initi« 
ative and yet hold ourselves in readiness at any 
time to apply our collective strength, always cau- 


922 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [March 


tiously but resolutely, to prevent the individuality 
of any one man from being exercised to the detri- 
ment of his fellows, and to see that the individual 
initiative of each shall be in fair measure used for 
the common good of all. We can neither afford 
to be dogmatic individualists nor dogmatic in a 
blind belief in collectivism. We must gradually 
and cautiously make the necessary changes ; never 
making any change merely for the sake of change 
or without due and careful consideration, and re- 
membering that each considerable change may 
work hardship if made too quickly and too sweep- 
ingly ; but refusing to rest content with any policy 
of mere obstruction. We must apply these prin- 
ciples alike to the farmer and to the working man 
and to the business man — to the men who in the 
aggregate make up the vast majority of our 
citizenship. 

It is a mere truism to say that the prosperity of 
the farmer stands as basic to the prosperity of the 
nation. On the whole, in every great crisis in the 
past, the farmer has stood as preéminently the 
arch-typical American, who in peace and in war 
took the lead in the work without which the re- 
public must succumb. In our country the typical 
farmer has been the man who owned the land 
which he himself, with his own hands, assisted 
by his sons and by one or two hired men, tilled — 
and this is the farmer of whom I especially speak. 
We cannot afford to have him supplanted by the 
man who merely holds his land as a tenant for an 
absentee owner. We cannot afford to have his 
farm absorbed by a big landowner. Yet in sec- 
tions of our country the tenant farmer has tended 
to increase ominously at the expense of the man 
who owns his farm, and in other sections there 


1918] SPEED UP THE WAR 923 


has been an equally ominous tendency to see the 
big landowner, especially the big absentee land- 
owner, grow at the expense of the small land- 
owner. Various causes have combined to bring 
about these results; and these causes have been 
due far less to any evil action than by sheer in- 
action. No one remedy will by itself avail. But 
there are various remedies which, taken together, 
cando much. The laws must be so shaped as to 
secure to the tenant not merely a right to his im- 
provements, but a certain right to the land which 
he cultivates, and of giving him easy means of 
himself acquiring it. We should sharply dis- 
criminate in favor of the actual farmer against 
the moneyed man, not really a farmer at all, who 
buys thousands of acres and holds them for specu- 
lation. We must in every way favor the man 
who lives upon the land which he owns and which 
he himself cultivates. Moreover, we must render 
it possible for the man who works on the farm, 
but who does not own any land, for the hired man 
who is not a tramp laborer, but a hard-working, 
steady, industrious worker, to acquire and to own 
a farm for himself. We must make it more 
practicable than at present for the farmer to get 
money at not too high a price for the actual work 
of production — not in order to acquire more land 
or for other purposes, but actually do the pro- 
ductive work of the farm. By preference the 
money thus advanced should be by private organ- 
izations, encouraged by the government for that 
purpose; but if such organizations fail, then the 
government itself must undertake the work. 
Under certain conditions of joint production 
it has in practice proved possible for certain pur- 
poses to get groups of farmers to guarantee one 


924 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [March 


another; and this offers a mighty tangible way 
of becoming one’s brother’s keeper — of course 
when, and only when, the conditions make it prac- 
ticable. If you go on a man’s bond to permit him 
to get a hog, you take an intelligent interest in his 
getting the right kind of a hog and that he him- 
self is the right kind of a man to take care of 
the hog! . 

As in all cases whatsoever of social and indus- 
trial reform, what is needed is actual betterment 
by action, actual betterment in practice ; we should 
welcome every experiment, and then profit by a 
large scale application of the lessons taught by 
such experiment. In California such experiment 
has practically been tried in connection with aid 
given by the State to encourage fit persons to take 
up land in the irrigated sections; insistence being 
laid upon getting only the right kind of practical 
farmer, while the State secures to him the advan- 
tages that can only come from the outlay of capi- 
tal. The principle thus successfully tried is 
capable of widespread application. 

Above all, everything should be done to en- 
courage cooperative work among our farmers. 
The business man and the working man have both 
grown to realize during the last two generations 
that each is strengthened by unity with his fel- 
lows. There must be no improper discrimination 
against any man because of his choice to work by 
himself. There will always be plenty of posi- 
tions in which individualistic work is best. But 
more and more we shall find that normally men 
can do best by working in combination with one 
another. This especially applies to the farmer. 
It is a slow process to learn. Much has been 
done among the farmers in certain parts of Eu- 


1918] SPEED UP THE WAR 925 


rope along the line of codperation — cooperation 
in marketing their products; cooperation even in 
purchasing what they need, and codperation in 
more than one matter of home management. The 
state should encourage such cooperation, and 
where necessary cautiously supplement it by gov- 
ernmental action. Standing as a separate unit the 
farmer cannot completely hold his own and get 
full and proper reward for his work in the face 
of great business concerns. But-cooperative or- 
ganizations of farmers if wisely handled, and if 
they are willing to accept and to pay for the 
proper leadership, can hold their own with any 
of the great business concerns with which they 
have to deal, can eliminate such middlemen as are 
unnecessary, and can use the services of those 
middlemen who fill a great and useful function 
in such manner as to be of benefit to both, and of 
benefit to the public at large. Every such pow- 
erful organization of farmers, like every other 
organization of our citizens, must while safe- 
guarding their own interests never forget their 
duty to stand with disinterested and unselfish loy- 
alty by the whole commonwealth. The one union 
to which all of us belong, and to which our para- 
mount allegiance is owing, is that union which is 
known as the American republic. 

Let us steadily keep in mind the one great fact 
that nothing must be allowed to interfere with 
ample production. There must be no limitation 
of production. This means that there must be no 
attempt by the government at price-fixing which 
shall result to the detriment of the farmer. 
Any experiment in price-fixing, and especially in 
maximum price-fixing, should be entered into 
only most cautiously, and only when there has 


926 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [March 


been such thorough canvass of the situation as 
to enable us to guarantee that good and not 
harm will result. The price-fixing by the govern- 
ment during the past year has worked nothing but 
mischief. It has slowed up production ; it has ag- 
gravated existing inequalities by making some 
prices too high and some too low. In the winter 
that has just closed we have seen great suffering, 
especially among the poor, on account of a coal 
famine which was in part caused by very inju- 
dicious and improper price-fixing. A year ago 
our government should have undertaken to put a 
premium upon the greatest possible production by 
the farmer. It failed to do so and some of its 
actions positively tended to reduce production. 
Such limitation of production is an invitation to 
calamity. This war means shortage of food 
everywhere, and it is worse than folly, both for 
our own sakes and for the sakes of our allies, if 
we fail in every way to stimulate farm production 
(and all other production necessary for winning 
the war as well) at this time. The farmers of 
this country, the men who have for years earned 
their livelihood by tilling the soil, and who are not 
merely enthusiastic amateurs in the matter, are 
those to whom we must look for the immense 
bulk of production from the soil. It is they who 
must grow the foodstuffs upon which the rest of 
us depend. Everything should be done to aid 
them. Most certainly no obstacle should be put 
in their way by the government, and the govern- 
ment should not permit any other person to put 
obstacles in their way. 

The questions of business and labor cannot be 
considered wholly apart from one another. Un- 
less business is prosperous it is out of the question 


1918] SPEED UP THE WAR 927 


that the country can prosper and, therefore, out 
of the question that labor can prosper. On the 
other hand, it is no less true that the prosperity 
may come in altogether improper proportion to 
business men at the expense of those whom they 
serve and those who work for them. We have 
to avoid equally the foolish creature who fails 
to see that unless business prospers there cannot 
be general prosperity, and the equally foolish 
creature who fails to see that it is our duty collec- 
tively to take such steps as are necessary in order 
that the prosperity may be passed around with 
reasonable equity. ~ 

Our aim must be to help business, not hamper 
business. The Sherman law at first did good for 
it stopped the uncontrolled riot of the big business 
men who wished to be a law unto themselves and 
to absorb all business, and it definitely established 
the supremacy of the national government over 
them. But for the last 10 years it has done 
serious mischief, far more mischief than it has 
done good. It is foolish to object to large scale 
business. The telegraph and telephone, steam 
and electricity, have rendered large scale business 
an absolute necessity, if this country is to be kept 
abreast of the progressive countries of the world. 
And in international relations it is only large 
scale business that can secure for America its 
proper share of world business. In internal re- 
lations on the whole there should be less diffi- 
culty in securing a high wage and proper treat- 
ment for labor from large scale business than 
from other kinds of business, for the simple rea- 
son that it is the prosperous business which has 
the prosperity to share with its employee. This 
seems a sufficiently obvious truth. But in prac- 


928 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [March 


tice there are plenty of demagogues and plenty of 
timid or self-seeking politicians who forget it. 
In business, as in farming and in the labor world, 
our aim should be to secure cooperation and con- 
trol; cooperation among business men, subject 
to control by the government. We should ac- 
cept the fact that big business deserves fair treat- 
ment and should not be penalized; but that it 
should not be left unregulated, uncontrolled. 
The nation must be the master of the corpora- 
tion; not in the least to destroy the corporation; 
on the contrary, to help it and to see that an 
ample reward comes to those who invest in it and 
who manage it; but to see also that no injustice 
is done competitors, that the public is served, and 
that the labor men, the working men, are treated 
as in effect partners who must have their full 
share of the prosperity. 

In this war no profiteering should be allowed. 
It should not be stopped, however, by hampering 
production. Production should be encouraged in 
every way. But the excess profits should be 
taxed on a heavily increasing scale (which, in- 
cidentally, cannot be done to a fully satisfactory 
degree so long as production is kept down by the 
kind of price-fixing that has been attempted). 
All corporations doing an interstate or foreign 
business, which means all big corporations, 
should, by a system of license or of incorpora- 
tion, come under national control, being made 
subject to some national board at Washington 
and required to comply with the regulations es- 
tablished by this administrative board in compli- 
ance with congressional action; and so long as 
the corporations thus comply they should be left 
free from the operations of the Sherman law. 


1918] SPEED UP THE WAR 929 


The law and regulations should be designed to 
carry out the purpose above expressed. 

Business cannot be permanently successful nor 
can the commonwealth itself permanently stand 
on a safe basis in a political democracy like ours 
unless we conscientiously strive to make the 
working man in some real sense a partner in the 
business in which he works; that is, to make this 
an industrial as well as a political democracy. 
Democracy can succeed neither in peace nor in 
war save through leadership. The effort to level 
down instead of leveling up represents that odious 
envy of success which is but another manifesta- 
tion of the same evil spirit which in certain very 
successful men shows itself as an odious arro- 
gance toward the less successful. The arro- 
gance and the envy are merely different sides of 
the same evil shield. In striving to secure a 
square deal for the working man, to secure for 
him an increase in his share of the profits of, 
and gradually a share along certain lines in the 
control of the business, we must keep steadily in 
mind these truths or we shall cause more harm 
than we remedy. 

The government at Washington has wholly 
failed to do its duty in connection with labor, 
and it is to this failure that a large part of the 
calamitous breakdown in the shipping program 
is due. To say that we are behind in the ship 
program is to describe disaster in the terms of an 
accident. It is now apparent that the promise 
made a year ago as to the shipbuilding program 
will not be more than a third fulfilled; and this 
will immeasurably cramp our effort abroad; and 
for the last few months trouble has primarily 
lain with the labor situation, and this in turn has 


930 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [March 


been largely, and probably mainly, due to the gov- 
ernment’s haphazard lack of a settled and well 
thought-out plan. The government failed effi- 
ciently to regulate profiteering by our own capi- 
talists, or to discriminate between those of our 
own capitalists who did well and those who did 
ill (a situation which is, of course, merely aggra- 
vated by any abandonment of the tariff or other 
action to the interest of profiteering by foreign 
capitalists and manufacturers who can use the 
underpaid labor of overseas against our own in- 
dustrial workers). This invited labor troubles; 
and the government then feared to deal efficiently 
with the evil conditions which its own previous 
inefficiency had invited. England, on the con- 
trary, by dealing fairly and fearlessly with both 
sides, has avoided nine-tenths of the labor trou- 
bles we have had and has been able to accumulate 
incredible quantities of war material. Our gov- 
ernment has let both capitalists and labor unions 
use the war merely as a means to gain advantage 
in the struggle with each other. Such an atti- 
tude, on either side, in this stupendous struggle 
for human rights and human safety is treachery 
to this country and to the whole human race. 
Fundamentally it is due to failure in duty by the 
government ; and an aroused public opinion must 
compel the government to do its duty, or else we 
shall find that America has entered the war too 
late, and has proved unequal to her task. 

The immediate need while the war lasts, and 
while it is necessary in every way to speed up pro- 
duction, is for the government so to act as regards 
every industry connected with the war as to 
secure the necessary reward for the capitalists 
and yet to stop all excessive and improper prof- 


1918] SPEED UP THE WAR 931 


iteering ; so as to secure an ample reward for the 
wage-worker, and also to insist that for the full 
wage a full day’s work be done. In the past too 
often capitalists in the name of efficiency have 
speeded up the work of the laborers to the top 
notch and themselves absorbed almost all the 
profits. Naturally this has produced a revolt in 
which the workman has sought to protect himself 
against exploitation by limiting production and 
by reducing the work of all to the level of the 
work of the least efficient. We cannot accept 
such attitude by either side as proper. We have 
a right to insist upon the utmost efficiency. Buta 
due proportion of the reward for the efficiency 
must go to the wage worker; and he must have 
some representation in the business which will 
Satisfy honest inquiry on his part that justice is - 
being done. Here I do not have to ask that we 
proceed merely on theory. At the moment the 
Indiana State Council of Defense, under the pres- 
idency of Mr. Hays, for example, illustrates pre- 
cisely what I mean. The heads of labor or- 
ganizations work on that board with representa- 
tives of the government, and with representatives 
of capital. They are given their full share of 
the management, and all the details of the work 
have been laid bare to them; and they have ac- 
cepted their full share of the responsibility and 
have worked on exactly the same basis as their 
colleagues. In all war business concerns the gov- 
ernment, as an incident to encourage the business 
and yet to supervise-and control it, must hereafter 
see that the wage worker has his right guaran- 
teed to him and that in return the full perform- 
ance of his duties is expected. He must be given 
the same right to organize as capital has, and 


932 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [March 


the same right to bargain that the corporation has, 
and exactly as the corporation that does ill should 
be held to strict account, so the labor organiza- 
tion should hereafter be expected itself to give the 
fullest measure of service, and while jealously 
safeguarding the safety, of its members to do so 
by building up and not by pulling down the effi- 
ciency and productiveness of the business. The 
corporation should not be allowed to forbid the 
organization of the workers; first-class wages and 
working conditions, and if possible some share in 
any profits should be assured; and in return the 
organized workers should neither be allowed to 
drive out non-organized workers nor permitted 
to shirk the job. The laboring man, the wage 
worker, through a system of old-age insurance 
and insurance against accidents and involuntary 
unemployment must have his future made certain. 
His housing and living conditions must be made 
such as are computable with self-respecting citi- 
zenship. He must be given the amplest wage 
consistent with seeing business develop to its full 
possibilities. The state must when necessary in- 
tervene in the interest of the commonwealth as a 
whole to see that no wrong is done by either side. 

The wage worker has a right to all these things 
and it is to the profound interest of the common- 
wealth that he should have them. It is to the 
interest of the commonwealth that collectively and 
individually the wage workers should be in a posi- 
tion of economic safety or economic advantage; 
that they should have money in the savings banks 
and the power and dignity that come when men 
are relieved from the sense of precariousness in 
their livelihood. In order to achieve this eco- 
nomic power and dignity for the worker himself 


1918] SPEED UP THE WAR 933 


and in order that the community as a whole shall 
profit to the full by the ample reward, this ample 
reward should and must be given the working 
man. When he speeds up his work the employer 
must not be permitted to usurp the benefit. But 
the working man must himself do his full job. 
If a coal miner, instead of working eight hours 
a day at high wages, works four hours and loafs 
four; if a man in an industrial plant works only 
three days and idles three because he can get as 
much money for three days as he formerly could 
for six; if a riveter in a shipyard drives but half 
the number of rivets he formerly did — why, 
all alike are proving false to themselves, to their 
fellow workmen and to the country. In such 
case their offense is different in kind from but 
in degree precisely as bad as the offense of the 
profiteering capitalists; and they are just as un- 
worthy citizens as he is. The law of a successful 
democracy must be the law of service and of re- 
ward measurably proportionate to the service ren- 
dered; service from the great and service from 
the small, service in peace and service in war. 
Let us employ our collective strength through the 
government so far as it is humanly possible to 
secure justice to each man. Let us also demand 
from each man service, not as a favor but as a 
right, expected by, and where possible exacted 
by, the commonwealth. 

This should be our ideal while the war lasts. 
Substantially, and changing it as actual experi- 
ence — the only true test — shows change to be 
necessary, it should be our ideal after the war. 
“Hands” must hereafter be treated as hands 
with brains and hearts, with dignity and vision, 
back of them. Hereafter working men must in a 


934 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [March 


very real sense be treated as partners. They 
must have their seats at the council board. They, 
and all the rest of us must all work together, to 
make this country a good place to live in for the 
children of all of us. A square deal for every 
man! And for every woman; and for the little 
children. An eight-hour law should be the gen- 
eral rule ; and generally with provision for a bonus 
on the basis of individual production. Over- 
work, underpay, bad housing, must all be pro- 
vided against. Class antagonism must yield to 
mutual respect and therefore to mutual forbear- 
ance and consideration. Condescension and pat- 
ronage by the capitalist must yield to comrade- 
ship and partnership; and in his turn the work- 
ing man must treat with scorn and abhorrence the 
envy and mean hatred which have made the I. W. 
W. and Germanized Socialists of our own land, 
like the Bolsheviki abroad, traitors to the great 
cause of orderly liberty, of self-respecting duty- 
performing democracy ; of the cause of freedom 
and humanity. 

Friends, it would neither be possible nor desir- 
able for me to try to set forth in detail the gov- 
ernmental methods through which I think it is 
necessary for our great republic to work out its 
salvation. All I can do and all it is desirable 
that I should do is to roughly outline, to set before 
you, the principles that should govern our actions. 
This I have done. 

But while it is evident that if we are to face 
the new era with success we must try new meth- 
ods, it is also evident that we must stand by 
the old homely virtues that in their sum make up 
the standard of individual and national character. 
No organization, no legislation, no possible gov- 


1918] SPEED UP THE WAR 935 


ernmental action will avail if the man does not 
have the right stuff in him. Down at the bottom 
the commonwealth must rest on the character of 
the individual citizen; and this he must himself 
develop, and if he fails to develop it he must not 
seek to throw the blame on somebody else. The 
action of the government must normally be of 
such type as to tell against that degeneracy of 
character which comes from habitually lying 
down on the government instead of trusting pri- 
marily to a hardy and virile self-reliance. There 
must be seeming exceptions to this rule, where 
we use our collective power to prevent individual 
wrong-doing or individual suffering; but even 
these must be developed from, as a fundamental 
basis, the doctrines of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, the principles of Washington and Lin- 
coln, rather as to individual rights and duties, and 
not from the theories of the Prussian autocracy, 
which has adopted Marxism as a stafi for abso- 
lutism, and which treats man as made for the 
state, and not the state as made for man. 

We must work in the spirit of Washington and 
Lincoln, and this we can only do, if we apply that 
spirit to the issues of the present day. It is 
in peace as it is in war. Washington’s Conti- 
nentals, with their flint-lock muskets and short- 
range cannon, would have been helpless before 
the men in blue and gray who bore the weapons 
of the Civil War, and the weapons that were 
formidable in the days of Grant and Lee would 
now count for no more than stone-headed axes 
against the tremendous machinery of modern 
warfare. But the spirit that now conquers in 
war is the same as it was in 1776 and in 1865. 
Weapons change, but the soul of the man who is 


\ 


936 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [March 


to handle the weapon does not change. The men 
under Pershing reflect honor on this republic 
precisely because they have those qualities of 
courage, hardihood, resourcefulness and energy 
which were possessed by the men who followed 
Sheridan and Stonewall Jackson, by the men who 
followed Mad Anthony Wayne and Light Horse 
Harry Lee. So it is with the great and complex 
machinery of our industrial and social life. The 
simple governmental processes which sufficed in 
the days of Washington and even in the days of 
Lincoln are as utterly inadequate to-day in peace 
as the flint-lock of Bunker Hill and the smooth- 
bore muskets of Bull Run would be in war. We 
cannot afford to tolerate flint-lock methods of 
warfare in time of war, or flint-lock methods of 
government for meeting the problems of industry 
in time of peace. We need new weapons. But 
we need the old spirit back of the new weapons. 
We need to show the same combination of ideal- 
ism and of hard-headed common sense, of indig- 
nation against wrong and sober caution against 
being misled into foolish action against wrong, 
that our forefathers have shown in both the great 
national crises of the past. We need to show 
generosity of heart and also soundness of head. 
We need courage, we need common sense — for 
without courage and common sense we shall not 
work out our salvation. But even more we need 
to show in our relations with one another here 
within our own boundaries and in our relations 
with the rest of the nations of mankind, that 
quality for the lack of which no other qualities 
atone, that quality — itself the sum of many qual- 
ities — lacking which no nation can ever attain 


1918] SPEED UP THE WAR 937 


to true greatness ; the quality of character — char- 
acter, which neither does wrong nor suffers 
wrong; character which will rather do right to 
its own hurt than profit by the evil done others. 

Let us judge each man on his worth as a man; 
for the line of cleavage between good men and 
bad men runs through every class. There are 
some bad men in every rank of life. Yet I be- 
lieve that in every rank of life the good men far 
outnumber the bad. Trouble generally comes 
from failure to understand one another, and 
therefore failure to sympathize with one anoth- 
er’s needs and feelings and purposes. Let us try 
to look at all the puzzling questions that arise with 
our brother’s eyes as well as with our own. Lin- 
coln laid down the great needs for us to meet. 
This is the people’s government — our govern- 
ment, friends, yours and mine. It must be a 
government of the people ; for everybody must be 
governed, must be controlled, and if there is 
not self-control there will in the end be alien 
control, if we do not govern ourselves somebody 
else will surely govern us. It must be govern- 
ment by the people; by all of us; not merely by 
some of us. It must be government for the peo- 
ple; again for all the people, not merely some of 
us; not for a mob, nor for a plutocracy, but for 
all decent, well-behaved men and women.. Woe 
to those who would sunder us, brother from 
brother, along the lines either of envy. or of ar- 
rogance! 

We can secure among ourselves the necessary 
generosity and forbearance and pride in the per- 
formance of duty, we can in international matters 
show combined strength and justice only if in 


938 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [May 


our hearts and with all our hearts we believe and 
act on the doctrine that righteousness exalteth a 
nation. 


NO QUESTION OF DIVIDED LOYALTY 
CAN BE TOLERATED 


AN ADDRESS DELIVERED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF 
WITTENBERG COLLEGE AT SPRINGFIELD, OHIO, ON 
MAY 25, 1918 


At this time no good American should sleep 
easily, if during the day he has not done every- 
thing in his power to put this country back of the 
armed men who in France are fighting for our 
own national honor and interest, and for the 
future of the free peoples of civilized mankind. 
The peril is faced by and the honor is rightly due 
to those at the front. But the rest of us, the men 
and women who cannot get to the front, must at 
least back up our men in every possible way; and 
the way to back them up is every day, every week, 
every month, to do the thing that is next. At 
this moment the thing that is next is the Red 
Cross drive. Last month it was the Liberty loan. 
And all the time the biggest thing that is next is 
to back up the men who wear our uniform by 
insisting that we at home tolerate absolutely no 
division on the great question of Americanism. 

It is primarily on this question of Americanism 
that I come to speak to-day. I accepted the invi- 
tation to come here, from the president of Witten- 
berg college, who informed me he wished me be- 
cause Wittenberg college, founded by Lutherans 
of German blood, was American and nothing else, 


1918] DIVIDED LOYALTY 939 


and that he wanted me to preach the straightest 
and stiffest doctrine of Americanism, exactly such 
doctrines as I have been preaching all my life, 
and most of all during the past four years. To 
emphasize the quality of true Americanism, 
President Heckert, the president of this Lutheran 
college, has asked my old and deeply valued 
friend, Monseigneur Vattman to come, so that it 
is a Lutheran preacher and a Catholic ecclesiastic 
who give the invocation and the benediction at 
this meeting. Both alike are of German blood, 
and both of them are as straight and good Amer- 
icans as are to be found in the whole United 
States, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. 
Americans in body and in spirit, standing like all 
other good Americans, for America and the allies 
of America, and against the Prussianized Ger- 
many of to-day and all her allies and vassal states. 

Such an invitation from such a source appealed 
to me peculiarly, and I was glad to accept it. 

The first essential here in the United States is 
that we shall be one nation and that the American 
nation. We are a new nation, by blood akin to 
but different from every one of the nations of 
Europe. We have our own glorious past, we are 
a nation with a future such as no other nation in 
the world has before it, if only we the men and 
women of to-day, do our full duty and bring up 
our sons and daughters to do their full duty, as 
Americans, and as nothing else. 

In such a nation there can be no fifty-fifty alle- 
giance. There is not such thing as being loyal 
to the United States, and also loyal to any other 
power. It is just as impossible as for a man 
to be loyal to his wife and also equally loyal to 
some other woman. If any man dilutes his 


940 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [May 


loyalty to America by any degree of loyalty to any 
other country whatsoever, he ought instantly to 
be sent out of this country and back to the coun- 
try where he belongs. And of course the case is 
even worse if he sacrifices his loyalty for America 
to his hatred for some other country. The Ger- 
man-American alliance put the interests of Ger- 
many above the interests of the United States, it 
showed itself the embittered foe of America and 
tried to run our politics with reference not to our 
own honor and interests but to the needs of the 
Germany of the Hohenzollerns. The Sinn Fein- 
ers have put the honor and interest of America 
second to their hatred to England. The German- 
American alliance is dissolved, but Congress 
ought by law to make the dissolution permanent, 
and to render forever impossible its revival or the 
creation of any similar anti-American and semi- 
traitorous organization. In just the same way 
every Sinn Feiner who directly or indirectly seeks 
to discredit America’s allies in this war and 
thereby to give aid and comfort to Germany, 
should be interned as an enemy alien or sent out 
of the country. The'same thing is true of the 
Russian Bolshevists who seek to plunge this coun- 
try into the chaotic ruin into which Russia has 
been plunged. All these men are the allies of 
Germany, and the enemies of the United States. 
Their most potent allies are the native American 
demagogues whether politicians or newspaper 
editors, who pander to the foreign vote that is 
hostile to America, and the native American 
pacifists who have been the mean allies of German 
militarism, and the I. W. W. people, and the 
Germanized societies. All these are enemies to 
the United States and should be treated as such. 


1918] DIVIDED LOYALTY gat 


This question of Americanism has two sides to 
it. The first side is that which I have above out- 
lined. Applying what I have said in concrete 
form, it means that at this time the American of 
German blood should himself take the lead in 
proceeding against every man in this country who 
directly or indirectly favors Germany, or is luke- 
Warm in our war against Germany. In the 
Revolution the American of English blood took 
the lead against the British king and his backers. 
In this war it should be the Americans of Ger- 
man blood who take the lead against the Germany 
of the Hohenzollerns, the Germany that has be- 
come a menace to liberty and to justice and to 
mercy and to honor throughout the world. Amer- 
ica has special and intolerable grievances of her 
own against Germany, for no nation is worth 
being called a nation if it permits such wrong as 
Germany did this country to go unpunished. But 
in addition America is fighting the battle of all 
well-behaved nations. It is fighting for the right 
of free peoples to exist. No nation can be of full 
effect in such a war as this unless it stands loyally 
by its allies; and any man who now seeks to em- 
broil us with our allies is a traitor to the cause 
of America. 

Nor can any nation make such a fight effect- 
ively if it is not itself united. We can permit no 
division here. Our ideals and our principles of 
national unity and honor and greatness must be 
the same in whatever part of the country we dwell 
and from whatever stock we come. Therefore, 
we must have but one flag— the American flag, 
and but one language— the English language. 
In our primary schools nothing but the English 
language should be taught or studied, and the law 


942 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [May 


should require that after a reasonable period 
every newspaper in this country to be published in 
English. As for our higher institutions of learn- 
ing, all foreign languages should be taught in them 
insofar as it is considered necessary, but the lan- 
guage of the high school or college itself should 
always be the English language, and only the 
English language — just as it is in Wittenberg 
college to-day, just as it is in Rutgers college, 
which my own Dutch Reformed ancestors helped 
to found. And what is true of the newspaper 
and the college is true of the church. Let 
the Lutheran church profit by what befell my 
own church, the Dutch Reformed church, in New 
York. That church clung to Dutch as a lan- 
guage and dwindled until its leaders saw that it 
was doomed unless it adopted English as its 
tongue. If the Lutheran church tries to remain 
a German church, using the German language, 
either it will dwindle or else it will be an alien 
body in .the American commonwealth. We 
Americans must speak in the school, in the church 
and in the home and must read in our newspapers 
one language, the language of the Declaration of 
Independence, of Washington’s farewell address 
and of Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech. 

This is one side of Americanism. But there 
is another side just as important. If a man be- 
haves as an American it is an infamy to hold his 
creed or his national origin against him, or to 
fail in any way to give him the square deal as an 
American. If the man is a straight American 
it is our business to stand by him. I don’t care 
a rap whether he is Catholic, Protestant or Jew 
—I don’t care a rap whether his ancestors or he 
himself came from England or Ireland or Ger- 


1918] DIVIDED LOYALTY 943 


many, France or Italy, the Scandinavian or the 
Slavonic countries. We have a right to insist 
that he be an American and nothing else. If he 
lives up to that requirement he has a right to 
insist that we treat him exactly on a level with 
every other American. 

At this moment the great majority of the Amer- 
icans who are in whole or in part of German 
blood are as heartily loyal to America and, there- 
fore, as resolutely hostile to Germany, as all other 
good Americans. These men are fit to hold every 
office, civil or military, from the highest to the 
lowest, in this country. The best text books on 
Americanism and on the duty of Americans 
within this country and in regard to Germany, that 
have been written by Americans during this war, 
have been written by Americans who themselves 
are partly of German blood. Witness Owen 
Wistar’s “ Pentecost of Calamity,” James Beck’s 
“Documents In the Case,” and Gustavus Ohlin- 
ger’s “ Their True Faith and Allegiance.” 

As a matter of fact, all our children’s children 
will intermarry and in a very few generations 
all our people will derive their blood from various 
European nationalities. Let me give you my own 
case. About two and a half centuries ago some 
German peasants who had been driven out of the 
palatinate by the armies of Louis XIV came to 
America, and founded Germantown, near Phila- 
delphia. Two of these were ancestors of mine. 
At about the same time a French Protestant came 
here because the Catholics in France persecuted 
the Protestants, and an Irish Catholic came here, 
because the Protestants in Ireland persecuted the 
Catholics ; and some Dutch traders settled at the 
mouth of the Hudson, and some Scotch farmers 


044. NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [May 


and some Welsh and English Quakers settled in 
Pennsylvania. All these people lived here and 
their children lived here after them. They de- 
voted themselves to this land and ceased to think 
of any other. Their children’s children intermar- 
ried with one another — and if they had not inter- 
married I would not have been here. Therefore, 
in my case, if you tried to express me in terms of 
the hyphen, you would have to use seven hyphens ; 
and sooner or later the children of all of you will 
pass through a similar experience, for they are all 
going to intermarry, and even before they do thus 
intermarry they will all be turned out in the same 
American type. It is the type of Washington and 
Lincoln and Andrew Jackson. It is also the type 
of Muhlenberg and Herkimer and Custer, of 
Sheridan and Sullivan and Farragut, of Carroll 
and Schuyler and Paul Revere. I have named 
some of the great names in our history. They 
were borne by men whose fathers had come from 
many different lands. Who cares? They were 
all Americans and nothing but Americans. 
There wasn’t a hyphen in the lot. 

Here where I speak in the shadow of Witten- 
berg college there can be no truer American ideal 
to uphold than that of Muhlenberg. He was the 
pastor of a Lutheran church when the Revolution 
opened. He got up to preach his last sermon in 
the uniform of the Continental army, and told his 
congregation that now war had come it was his 
duty to fight as an American patriot in the ranks 
of American soldiers under Washington. His 
brother was the first speaker of the national Con- 
gress. They were Americans and nothing but 
Americans ; they knew but one flag, the American 


1918] DIVIDED LOYALTY 945 


flag, and their speech was the speech of their 
American fellows. 

A Red Cross friend, Maj. Simons, of St. Louis, 
told me a little anecdote the other day that illus- 
trates just what I mean. He had just come back 
from France, where he had been to the hospital to 
see my son Archie. In the next cot but one to 
Archie lay a young fellow who was a little worse 
hurt even than Archie was, for a bullet had gone 
right through the point of his heart. He had to 
lie absolutely motionless for eight days, until the 
muscle knitted, and his life was saved. He had 
shown conspicuous gallantry and ability. My 
friend, the Red Cross man, got into conversation 
with him, and after taking certain messages to 
be delivered to his family (and to one young lady 
who was not of his family) my friend asked him 
what his name was. Whereupon the young offi- 
cer, who was really little more than a boy, grinned 
and said, “ Say, now don’t faint when you hear my 
name. It is Von. Holtzendorf. Wouldn’t the 
Huns feel good if they knew they had ‘got’ a 
man with a name like that?” 

The boy in the cot between my son and this 
young officer had an English name. But those 
three boys were Americans and nothing else. 
They were straight United States! They had 
given their blood for this country — for one coun- 
try, for one flag; and they talked to one another 
in one language — the language of the soldiers of 
Washington and of the soldiers of Grant and Lee. 


946 GERMANY MUST BE BEATEN [July 


WHY GERMANY MUST BE BEATEN 


FROM A SPEECH DELIVERED BEFORE THE NEW YORK 
REPUBLICAN STATE CONVENTION AT SARATOGA 
ON JULy 18, 1918. 


THE two prime purposes of the American peo- 
ple at this time, having precedence of all others, 
are: first to insist upon the absolute and thorough- 
going Americanization of our entire citizenship ; 
and second, to win the war, to win it as speedily 
as possible, and to end it by the peace of over- 
whelming victory, a peace which shall guarantee 
to us, and to our Allies and to all well-behaved 
nations of the civilized world, lasting relief from 
the threat and horror of German world domin- 
ion. 

As regards Americanism, we must insist that 
there be in this country but one Nationality, the 
American nationality. There must be no perpet- 
uation in this country of separate national groups, 
with their separate languages and special loyalties 
to alien oversea flags. There can be no fifty-fifty 
Americanism in this country. There is room 
here only for 100 per cent. Americanism, only 
for those who are Americans and nothing else. 
We must have loyalty to only one flag, the Ameri- 
can flag; and it is disloyal to the American flag 
to try to be loyal to any other, whether that other 
is a foreign flag or the black and red flags which 
symbolize either anarchy or else treacherous hos- 
tility to all for which this nation stands. There 
is room in this country for but one language, the 
language of the Declaration of Independence, of 
Washington’s Farewell Address and of Lincoln’s 


1918] GERMANY MUST BE BEATEN 047 


Gettysburg Speech and Second inaugural; the 
English language. Americanism transcends 
every party consideration. No man who is not 
100 per cent. American is entitled to the support 
of any party which is itself entitled to be con- 
sidered an American party. We should treat 
as disloyal any attempt to carry water on both 
shoulders, to try to conciliate any half American 
vote here at home, or to antagonize any of our 
allies, or to serve Germany by seeking a peace 
without victory, or a peace as favorable to her as 
to the nations she has so brutally and unscrupu- 
lously wronged. We must set our faces like flint 
against all foreign racial solidarity in this coun- 
try; we must treat the Hun within our gates as 
the worst traitor to this Republic; and we must 
treat agitation for a premature or inconclusive 
peace as treason to the Republic. The German 
spy, the alien enemy here at home, and the even 
fouler and more despicable native American who 
serves the alien, should be interned at hard labor 
—or if his office be rank he should be buried. 
The surest way to stop the activities of spies and 
plotters is to shoot every one of them who is 
caught in a flagrant offense. 

This is one side of Americanism. The other 
and equally important side is to insist that every 
man who shows himself to be a Ioo per cent. 
American, wholehearted and singleminded in his 
loyalty to this country, no matter what his birth- 
place, national origin or creed, be treated as on a 
full and exact equality with every other good 
American. The bulk of American citizens in 
whole or in part of German blood (and I am my- 
self in part of German blood) are absolutely 
loyal. They have furnished as large and as gal- 


948 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [July 


lant a proportion of the fighting men of our army 
and navy as any other element; and of course it is 
the fighting men who meet and furnish the highest 
-test of sound American citizenship at this time. 
Moreover, in civil life they furnish their full 
proportion of the leaders in the movement to 
insist upon a unified, an unqualified and an un- 
divided American loyalty to our country. These 
men are fit to fill every civil and military position 
in this country, from the very highest down. It 
is not only an outrage, but it is deeply unpatriotic 
and un-American to discriminate against them in 
any shape or way. We are all Americans to- 
gether; and we must neither permit any divided 
allegiance in our citizenship, nor any attempt to 
divide our citizenship along lines of old-world 
nationality, nor any attempt to discriminate be- 
tween or against good Americans because of their 
national origin. 

Americanism means that we area nation. But 
it is no use to be a nation if the nation cannot de- 
fend itself, if its sons cannot and will not fight 
for its existence. The one task to which at this 
time we must all of us devote all our energies is 
to win this war and to win it now. We must 
speed up the war. We must insist upon absolute 
efficiency in our war activities. We must insist 
upon a peace conditioned upon the complete over- 
throw of Germany and the removal of all threat 
of German world dominion. We have across the 
seas a most gallant American army. The man is 
a poor American whose veins do not thrill with 
pride as he reads of the feats of our fighting men 
in France. Moreover, at least we have begun to 
send over enough soldiers to count for something 
real in the struggle. We have begun to give them 


1918] GERMANY MUST BE BEATEN 949 


some airplanes. As yet they only have what can- 
non we can get from the French, and we could 
get the army across at all only by the lavish use 
of British ships. But we have seemingly made 
a real start in ship production and airplane pro- 
duction at home, and we actually have several 
hundred thousand soldiers at the fighting front. 
We owe much of this achievement to the work 
of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs ; and 
we owe even more to the success of the German 
drive which began in March. At that time our 
fighting army at the front was smaller than that 
of Belgium and (in spite of its striking gallantry 
it could not play a great part) and this repre- 
sented the sum of our military achievement after 
a year of war! A very small degree of efficiency 
in handling the War Department would have 
meant that our army in France on January Ist 
would have far surpassed in size and equipment 
the army we have over there now in July. In 
such event the German drive would probably 
have been beaten back at once; exactly as if we 
had done our duty since the sinking of the 
Lusitania (which was the “ Firing on Fort Sum- 
ter” of this war), and had prepared in advance, 
we would have put a couple of million men in the 
field a year ago; in which event Russia would 
never have broken, and the war would unques- 
tionably have been over before this. Nine-tenths 
of wisdom consists in being wise in time. 

It is too late to remedy the past. It is a case 
of spilled milk. But let us avoid spilling the milk 
in the same fashion in the future. Let us begin 
to prepare now so that we shall not next year be 
again apologizing for a shortage of troops, guns, 
ships and airplanes. For four years the English 


950 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [July 


and French, and for over three years the Italians 
have fought our battles, and we have only just 
begun to fight for ourselves. This is not right. 
We have a larger population and greater re- 
sources than Germany or than France and Great 
Britain taken together. We have played a poor 
part in the early stages of the world war. Let 
us make the finishing of the war an American 
task. By this time next year we ought to have 
overseas an army as great as the combined armies 
of France and England, an army of between three 
and four million fighting soldiers on the various 
fighting fronts, and this, considering replacements 
and non-combatants, means at least six million 
men. Congress should refuse assent to the War 
Department’s present policy of procrastination 
in deferring the necessary extension of the age 
limits for the draft, and in other ways. There 
should be no further delay. Besides enormously 
strengthening our army in France we should by 
this time have declared war on Turkey and to 
have sent a hundred thousand soldiers to aid our 
Allies in western Asia. We have had to use 
English ships to ferry our troops across the At- 
lantic, and we could use Japanese ships to ferry 
them across the Pacific. 

There must be no peace until Germany is beaten 
to her knees. To leave her with a strangle-hold 
on Russia, and, through her vassal allies, Austria, 
Bulgaria and Turkey, dominant in Central Eu- 
rope and Asia Minor, would mean that she had 
won the war and taken a giant stride towards 
world dominion. Belgium must be reinstated 
and reimbursed ; France must receive back Alsace 
and Lorraine; Turkey must be driven from Eu- 
rope, Armenia made free, the Syrian Christians 


1918] GERMANY MUST BE BEATEN 951 


protected, and the Jews given Palestine. Italian- 
Austria must go to Italy and Roumanian-Hun- 
gary to Roumania. Moreover, we must raise 
against ‘the German menace the sleeping sword 
of the Slavs of Central Europe ; we must establish 
the great free commonwealths of the Poles, the 
Czecho-Slovaks and the Jugo-Slavs, and save 
the other submerged peoples who are their neigh- 
bors. Unless we do all this, unless we stand by 
all our Allies who have stood by us, we shall 
have failed in making the liberty of well-behaved 
civilized peoples secure, and we shall have shown 
that our announcement about making the world 
safe for democracy was an empty boast. 

These are the tasks set us as regards winning 
the war and ending the war. Therefore, the men 
elected this fall should not only be absolutely 
loyal, but possessed of broad vision, sound com- 
mon sense, high character and unyielding reso- 
lution ; for they must grapple with tremendous in- 
ternational questions. A timid man, a half- 
hearted pacifist or a foolish visionary may do as 
incalculable harm as the demagogue or con- 
scienceless political trickster. And of course no 
disloyal man, and no man of merely lukewarm 
loyalty, should be chosen, no matter what the 
ticket on which he runs. 

Loyalty to the people of the United States is 
the prime need. This is the people’s war. It is 
not the President’s war. It is not the war of 
Congress. It is the war of the people of the 
United States. Our whole-hearted and undi- 
vided loyalty is due to the country as a whole, 
and to every public servant, whether President 
or Senator, executive official or Congressman, 
precisely to the degree in which that public serv- 


952 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [July 


ant disinterestedly and efficiently serves the coun- 
try. We demand loyalty of this type, for it is 
the only loyalty for self-respecting American 
freemen. 

The events of the last year and a half have 
shown the necessity of electing a Republican 
Congress, to support the Administration at every 
point where it acts vigorously in prosecuting the 
war, and to supply its deficiencies in the prosecu- 
tion of the war and in the carrying out of a 
proper world policy. This country needs a Con- 
gress which will give the Administration this kind 
of vigorous support, and yet will fearlessly super- 
vise, and when necessary investigate, what is 
being done. Since the war began the Republi- 
cans in Congress have acted in a spirit of the 
largest patriotism, and wholly without regard to 
questions of politics. For the Administration 
measures designed for efficiently carrying on the 
war they have furnished a larger percentage of 
support than have the Democrats; and where 
the Administration was wrong, the bulk of the 
Republicans have ventured to withstand it and 
have stood by the country, whereas the bulk of 
the Democrats have not done so; although there 
have been some conspicuous and honorable ex- 
ceptions. It is only by such conduct that we can 
win the war and secure the right kind of peace. 
The need in Congress is for loyal Americans, 
far-sighted, strong-willed, resolute, who shall 
represent the people of this country and who shall 
stand steadfastly by the nation as a whole. 

So much for the war. But when we have 
closed the giant war we must then prepare for 
the giant tasks of peace. First and foremost 


1918] GERMANY MUST BE BEATEN 953 


we should act on. Washington’s advice, and in 
time of peace prepare against war, so that never 
again shall we be caught in such humiliating in- 
ability to defend ourselves and assert our rights 
as has been the case during the last four years. 
In a democracy such preparation should be the 
duty of the whole people and not merely a part 
of the people. There should be universal obliga- 
tory military training in the field for a period of, 
say, six months of all our young men between 
the ages of nineteen and twenty-one. I wish 
there could be industrial training also; but the 
six-months’ period would have to be lengthened 
if any serious industrial training is to be added to 
the military training. Such training would instill 
into our people a fervent and intense American- 
ism which would forever free us from the menace 
of Bolshevism and all of its American variety, 
from the frank homicidal march of the I. W. W. 
to the sinister anti-Americanism of the German- 
ized socialistic party. 

The preparation for the tasks of peace must be 
in the interest of all our people, of those who 
dwell in the open country and of those who dwell 
in the cities ; of all men who live honestly and toil 
with head or hand, and of all women just as 
much as of all men. Often there can be identity 
of function between men and women, generally 
there cannot be, but always there must be full 
equality of right. Women have the vote in this 
state. They should be given it at once in the 
nation at large. And in the councils of this state, 
and in the councils of our party, women should 
be admitted to their share of the direction on an 
exact equality with the men, and whenever it is 


954 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [July 


wisely possible their judgment and directive 
power should be utilized in association with men 
rather than separately. 

In our industrial activities, alike of farmer, 
wage worker and business man, our aim should 
be cooperation among ourselves, and control by 
the state to the degree necessary, but not beyond 
the degree necessary, in order to prevent tyranny 
and yet to encourage and reward individual ex- 
cellence. Business men should be permitted to 
cooperate and combine, subject to such regulation 
and control by the Government as will prevent 
injustice and sharp dealing among themselves or 
towards their employees, or as regards outsiders 
and the general public. There should be no 
penalizing of business merely because of its size, 
although, of course, there is peculiar need of su- 
pervision of big business. Government owner- 
ship should be avoided wherever possible; our 
purpose should be to steer between the anarchy 
of unregulated individualism and the deadening 
formalism and inefficiency of widespread state 
ownership. From time to time it has been found 
and will be found necessary for the Government 
to own and run certain businesses, the uninter- 
rupted prosecution of which is necessary to the 
public welfare and which cannot be adequately 
controlled in any other way, but normally this is 
as inadvisable as to permit such business con- 
cerns to be free from all Government supervision 
and direction. Normally, and save where the ne- 
cessity is clearly shown, our aim should be to en- 
courage and stimulate private action and coopera- 
tion subject to Government control. Profiteering 
out of the war should be stopped, but it is mere 
common sense to say that proper profit making 


1918] GERMANY MUST BE BEATEN 955. 


should be encouraged, for unless there is a profit 
the business cannot run, labor cannot be paid, 
and neither the public nor the Government can be 
served. And the misery in which this country 
was plunged before our business was artificially 
stimulated by the outbreak of the world war 
shows the need of a protective tariff. 

Labor likewise should have full right to co- 
operate and combine, full right to collective bar- 
gaining and collective action; subject always, as 
in the case of capital, to the paramount general 
interest of the public, of the commonwealth; and 
the prime feature of this paramount general in- 
terest is that each man shall do justice and shall 
receive justice. Hereafter in a very real sense 
labor should be treated, both as regards conditions 
of work and conditions of reward, as a partner in 
the enterprises in which it is associated; housing 
and living conditions must be favorable; effort 
must be made to see that the work is interesting, 
there must be insurance against old age, sickness 
and involuntary unemployment; and a share in 
the money reward for increased business success, 
whether it comes from efficiency shown in speed- 
ing up or from labor-saving machinery or from 
any other cause. And on the other side there 
must be no restriction of output, no levelling 
down, no failure by the man to exert his full 
powers, and to receive the full reward to which 
his individual excellence entitles him; and no 
failure to recognize that unless there is a proper 
reward for the capital invested and for the man- 
agement provided, absolute industrial disaster 
will result to every human being in this country. 

The welfare of the farmer stands as the bed- 
rock welfare of the entire commonwealth. Hith- 


956 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [July 


erto he has not received the full share of indus- 
trial reward and benefit to which he is entitled. 
He can receive it only as the result of organiza- 
tion and cooperation. Along certain lines the 
Government must itself cooperate with him; but 
normally most can be accomplished by codpera- 
tion among the farmers themselves, in marketing 
their products, in buying certain things which 
they particularly need, and in joint action along 
many lines. The state can wisely supplement 
such work of cooperation, but most of such work 
it cannot with wisdom itself undertake. 

These, in brief outline, are the tasks of re- 
building and upbuilding which are before us when 
peace comes. But the prime needs now are the 
needs of war. We must insist that this whole 
country be unified, nationalized, Americanized, 
and that no division of our American loyalty and 
American citizenship along the lines of national 
origin or of adherence to an alien flag be for one 
instant tolerated. We must insist upon speeding 
up the war, so that our giant strength may be 
fully utilized, and next year our armies overseas 
at least equal in the aggregate to the German 
armies. We must refuse any peace except the 
peace of overwhelming victory, a peace which 
will guarantee us against the threat of the German 
world dominion by securing to every well-behaved 

civilized power its real and complete freedom. 


1918] YANKEE VERSUS GERMAN BLOOD 057 


YANKEE’ BLOOD VERSUS GERMAN 
BLOOD 


A SPEECH DELIVERED AT SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, 
ON AUGUST 26, 1918 


THE two great needs of the moment are to in- 
sist upon thorough-going and absolute American- 
ism throughout this land, and to speed up the 
war; and secondarily to these needs come the 
needs of beginning even now to make ready, to 
prepare for the tasks that are to come after the 
war, the task of preparing so that never again 
shall war find us helpless, and the task of pre- 
paring for the social and industrial problems 
which this earth-shaking conflict of giants will 
leave in its ruinous wake. 

To insist upon thorough-going, I0o per cent. 
Americanism among all our people is merely an- 
other way. of saying that we insist upon being a 
nation proud of our national past and confident 
of our future as the greatest of the nations of 
mankind: for if we permit our people to be split 
into a score of different nationalities, each speak- 
ing a different language and each paying its real 
soul homage to some national ideal overseas, we 
shall not be a nation at all, but merely a polyglot 
boarding house; and nobody feels much loyalty 
to a polyglot boarding house or is proud to belong 
to it. Moreover, there is no such thing as a 
divided loyalty. Any kind of alloy in the loyalty 
makes the loyalty completely valueless. At this 
time the man of German origin who ‘says he is 
loyal to “Germanism,” to “ Deutschtum,” al- 
though not to Germany, to “ Deutschland,” is dis- 


958 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Aug. 


loyal to America. Germanism is incompatible 
with Americanism. The slightest loyalty to Ger- 
many is disloyalty to the United States. We can 
tolerate no half-way attitude, no fifty-fifty loyalty. 
The man must be an American and nothing else, 
or he is not an American at all. 

If a man is loyal to any other flag, whether a 
foreign flag or the red flag of anarchy, or the 
black flag of Germanized socialism, he is disloyal 
to the American flag; and we must have but one 
language, the language of the Declaration of In- 
dependence, and of Washington’s Farewell Ad- 
dress, and of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Speech, the 
English language. 

We are not internationalists. We are Amer- 
ican nationalists. We intend to do justice to all 
other nations. But in the last four years the pro- 
fessed internationalists like the profound pacifists 
have played the game of brutal German autocracy, 
the game of the militaristic and capitalistic tyr- 
anny which now absolutely rules the Prussianized 
Germany of the Hohenzollerns. Professional in- 
ternationalism stands towards patriotism exactly 
as free love stands toward a clean and honor- 
able and duty-performing family life. And 
American pacifism has been the tool and ally of 
German militarism, and has represented, and al- 
ways will represent, deep disloyalty to our be- 
loved country. 

Having said this, with all the emphasis at my ~ 
command, I wish with no less emphasis to say that 
the equally important other side of Americanism 
is the imperative duty of treating all men who 
show that they are in very truth Americans as on 
an entire equality of right and privilege, with 
no more regard to their birthplace, or the birth- 


1918] YANKEE VERSUS GERMAN BLOOD 959 


place of their parents than to their creed. In this 
crisis, since once our people grew fully awake, the 
Americans of German blood have in the immense 
majority of cases shown themselves as absolutely 
and aggressively and single-minded American as 
the citizens of any other stock or as the citizens 
who like most of us are of mixed stock. The 
German government and the-German newspapers 
have reluctantly recognized this and they are 
more bitter against the Americans of German 
blood than against any other Americans. The 
leading papers of Germany have contained bitter 
denunciations of them; and recently in the cap- 
tured report of a'German Inspector General which 
spoke of the American prisoners, the General es- 
pecially dwelt on the fact that the soldiers of for- 
eign parentage felt and behaved precisely like 
the soldiers of native parentage, and that this 
applied especially to the soldiers of German par- 
entage. Among the feats of especial gallantry 
chronicled of our men at the front a full propor- 
tion are to be credited to men whose names show 
that they are in whole or in part of German blood. 
We Americans all stand shoulder to shoulder in 
war and in peace; and woe to the men who would 
try to divide us. No man can serve two masters. 
No man can serve both the United States and 
Germany. li he is loyal to one side he must be 
hostile to the other. If he is a loyal American 
he must be against Germany and all her works. 
For the moment the pacifists and international- 
ists and pro-Germans dare not be noisy. But let 
our people beware of them as soon as the peace 
negotiations begin and from that time onward. 
They have worked together in the past and they 
will work together in the future, the pro-Germans 


960 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [Aug. 


furnishing the most powerful and most sinister 
element of the combination while the pacifists 
and the internationalists prance in the foreground 
and furnish the rhetoric. Let our people re- 
member that for the two and a half years before 
we entered the war the pacifists clamorously in- 
sisted that if we kept unprepared we would avoid 
war. Well, we tried the experiment. We kept 
completely unprepared. Even after we broke 
off diplomatic relations with Germany we refused 
to make the slightest preparation. And neverthe- 
less we drifted into the war. Pacifism and un- 
preparedness never keep a nation out of war. 
They invite war; and they insure that if war 
comes it shall be costly ; and long drawn out and 
bloody. If when the great war broke out four 
years ago, or even if when the Lusitania was 
sunk three years and a quarter ago, we had be- 
gun with all our energy to prepare, we would 
very possibly never have had to go to war at 
all, and if forced to go to war we would have 
conquered peace ninety days after our entry into 
the conflict. 

Let us remember this when the peace comes. 
Don’t trust the pacifists; they are the enemies 
of righteousness. Don’t trust the international- 
ists; they are the enemies: of nationalism and 
Americanism. Both of these groups appeal to 
all weaklings, illusionists, materialists, lukewarm 
Americans and faddists of all the types that vitiate 
nationalism. ‘Their leaders are plausible, make- 
believe humanitarians, who crave a notoriety that 
flatters their own egotism, who often mislead 
amiable and well-meaning, but short-sighted per- 
sons, who care for their own worthless carcasses 
too much to go anywhere near the front when 


1918] YANKEE VERSUS GERMAN BLOOD 061 


fighting comes, but who in times of inert and 
slothful thinking, when war seems a remote pos- 
sibility, can gain a reputation by windy schemes 
which imply not the smallest self-sacrifice or serv- 
ice among those who advocate them, and which 
therefore appeal to all exponents of intellectual 
vagary, sentimental instability and eccentricity, 
and that sham altruism which seeks the cheap 
glory of words that betray deeds. All these ele- 
ments combined may, when the people as a whole 
are not fully awake, betray this country into 
a course of folly for which when the hour of 
stern trial comes our bravest men will pay with 
blood and our bravest women with tears. For 
those illusionists do not pay with their own 
bodies for the dreadful errors into which they 
have led a nation. They strut through their time 
of triumph in the hours of ease; and when the 
hours of trial come they scatter instantly and let 
the nationalists, the old-fashioned patriots, the 
men and women who believe in the virile fighting 
virtues, accept the burden and carry the load, 
meet the dangers and make the sacrifies, and give 
themselves to and for the country. Nations are 
made, defended, and preserved, not by the illu- 
sionists but by the men and women who practice 
the homely virtues in time of peace, and who in 
time of righteous war are ready to die, or to send 
those they love best to die, for a shining ideal. 
When peace comes let us accept any reasonable 
proposal, whether calling for a league of nations 
or for any other machinery, which we can in 
good faith act upon, and which does really offer 
some chance of lessening the number of future 
wars and diminishing their area. But let us 
never forget that any promise that such a league 


962 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [Aug. 


or other piece of machinery will definitely do 
away with war is either sheer nonsense or rank 
hypocrisy. When the test comes any strong and 
brutal nation will treat any such agreement as a 
scrap of paper, precisely as Germany treated the 
Hague conventions and the treaties guarantee- 
ing the neutrality of Belgium, unless well-behaved 
nations possess both the will and the power to 
enforce the observance of the agreement. There- 
fore let us treat any peace treaties and agree- 
ments never as substitutes for but merely as sup- 
plementary to the duty of preparing our own 
strength for our own defense. And let us make 
this duty the duty of all the people, as it should 
be in a democracy, where universal suffrage 
should rest on universal service. Let us rest our 
strength on an army which shall consist not of a 
special caste, but of the people themselves; on an 
army produced by the universal obligatory train- 
ing of all our young men sometime between the 
ages of 19 and 21. 

This is for the future. Our immediate duty 
is to win the war. We must speed up the war 
to the limit. We must try to finish it at the 
earliest possible moment, but be resolved to fin- 
ish it, no matter how long it takes. We must in- 
sist on the peace of complete and overwhelm- 
ing victory. We must remember that a huge 
army put in the field at one time will accomplish 
what the same number of men put into the field 
in driblets can never accomplish. We have a 
much larger population and much greater nat- 
ural resources than Germany or than France and 
England combined. Therefore, by next spring 
we should have thousands of our own field guns, 
and scores of thousands of our own airplanes at 


1918] YANKEE VERSUS GERMAN BLOOD 963 


the front, and an enormous ship tonnage in which 
to ferry across the ocean so many troops that 
by April we may have four million trained fight- 
ing men at the front, not counting non-combat- 
ants and reserves. The age limits for the draft 
should be greatly increased and the exemptions 
greatly diminished. All of this, of course, should 
have been done six months ago — indeed a year 
ago. But it is not too late now. It is the elev- 
enth hour, but not the twelfth. We must quit 
making this a “ leisurely war.” Our gallant fight- 
ing men at the front have shown the most splen- 
did military qualities, and have won for them- 
selves and for this nation the highest honor. 
Therefore we who stay at home must back them 
up by deeds, not merely by applause. They are 
entitled to such backing ; and such backing means 
great quantities of ships, guns and airplanes, and 
millions of trained men. It is a good thing, an 
admirable thing, to back up the Red Cross and 
the Y. M. C. A., and all kindred bodies; to pay 
taxes cheerfully and buy Liberty bonds and thrift 
stamps ; to save food and grow food, and to work 
with all our might with head and hand at useful 
industry. All these things will help the fighting 
men to win the war. But it is the fighting men 
at the front who will win the war. Therefore 
back up the fighting men; and the only way to 
back them up is to do the things of which I have 
spoken above. 

So much for the vital, the immediate, the im- 
perative needs. They are the needs that must 
at all hazards be met forthwith. But there are 
other paramount needs which we must also con- 
side. 

This terrible war, with all its dreadful and la- 


964 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [Aug. 


mentable accompaniments, may nevertheless do a 
lasting good to this nation; for it may scourge us 
out of the wallow of materialism, made only 
worse by a mawkish or vicious sham sentimental- 
ity, into which we were tending to sink. The 
finest, the bravest, the best of our young men have 
sprung eagerly forward to face death for the 
sake of a high ideal; and thereby they have 
brought home to us the great truth that life 
consists of more than easy-going pleasure, and 
more than hard, conscienceless, brutal striving 
after purely material success; that while we must 
rightly care for the body and the things of the 
body, such care leads nowhere unless we 
also have thought for our own souls and for the 
souls of our brothers. When these gallant boys, 
on the golden crest of life, gladly face death for 
the sake of an ideal, shall not we who stay be- 
hind, who have not been found worthy of the 
grand adventure, shall not we in our turn try to 
shape our lives so as to make this country the 
ideal which in our hearts we acknowledge, and 
the actual workaday business of our world, come 
a little nearer together, correspond in practice 
a little more closely? Let us resolve to make 
this country a better place to live in for these 
men, and for the women who sent these men to 
battle and for the children who are to come 
after them. 

When peace comes, and even before peace 
comes, let us weigh and ponder the mighty spirit- 
ual forces called into being by this war and turn 
them to the social and industrial betterment of 
this nation. Abraham Lincoln, with his usual 
homely commonsense and unerring instinct for 
the truth, made our people remember that the do!- 


1918] YANKEE VERSUS GERMAN BLOOD 965 


lar has its place, an essential place, but that the 
man stands above the dollar. Of late years we 
have worshiped the dollar overmuch, and have 
been snugly content with sleek service to Mam- 
mon, heedless of the ominous fact that over- 
devotion to dollars is almost equally damaging 
to those who have too many and to those who 
have too few; for when success is treated as 
tested and measured, not by the achievement 
of a self-respecting, hardworking, happy family 
life, and the performance of duty to oneself and 
to others with pleasure as a proper accompani- 
ment of the duty ; but merely by the mass of dol- 
lars amassed — why, the result is that the suc- 
cessful greedy ones develop a mean arrogance, 
and the unsuccessful greedy ones a mean envy; 
and envy and arrogance are equally unlovely sides 
of the same evil shield. 

At present the best blood in this country, from 
all the homes of this country, is being spilled by 
our sons and brothers for principle and for jus- 
tice and for humanity and for love of country, 
because our sons and brothers have placed love 
of a great cause above the dollar. Let us see 
that the position is not reversed for a long time 
to come! The other day I read the statement 
that there were a hundred thousand undernour- 
ished children in New York City. If we had a 
like number of undernourished soldiers, what a 
cry would go up! Yet these children are the 
citizens of the future, and the industrial arm is 
of just as much importance as the military. We 
must realize this, and act on our realization, or 
some day our republic will rock to its foundation. 

In achieving this purpose we must be equally on 
our guard against the American Romanoffs, the 


966 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [Aug. 


reactionaries of industry and politics, and against 
the American Bolshevists who appeal to the bas- 
est passions of envy and class hatred, and who 
strive for disorder and anarchy. The history of 
Russia during the last 18 months teaches our 
country exactly what to avoid. And one of the 
lessons it teaches is that the most-sordid corrup- 
tionist may do no more harm to the nation than 
the conscienceless demagogue or the fanatical and 
impracticable visionary. 

We must take the rule of justice and fair play 
as our guide in dealing alike with capital and 
with labor, with the business man and the work- 
ing man. Our theory should be cooperation 
among individuals, and control by the govern- 
ment with the purpose of helping the busi- 
ness succeed, but of seeing that the success im- 
plies service to the public and a fair division of 
profits among all concerned. During war time 
there should be no profiteering, no unusual and 
abnormal profits; but there must be legitimate 
profits or the business can not go on, and unless 
it goes on the public can not be served nor the 
wage earners receive their wages. If there are 
no profits we can not raise the taxes necessary 
to provide money for the war. The working- 
men likewise should have their right of collective 
action, including collective bargaining, insured; 
and in a very real sense they should be made part- 
ners in the business, with a share in the profits 
and, at least along certain lines, a share in the 
control; and provision should be made for their 
honorable security in old age, and for their insur- 
ance against disease, accident and involuntary 
unemployment. There must be the fullest recog- 
nition, in honor and in material reward, of the 


1918] YANKEE VERSUS GERMAN BLOOD 967 


skillful, conscientious, intelligent, hard-working 
man — I mean a recognition which he will accept 
as such, not merely a recognition which outsiders 
think sufficient. But there must be no limiting 
of production, no limiting of output, and no dead- 
ening insistence on reducing the efficiency of the 
skillful and hardworking to the plane of the shift- 
less or inefficient. 

The foundation of our permanent civilization 
rests on the farmer ; and by farmer I mean not the 
man who owns land which others till, but the man 
who himself tills or helps till the ground part of 
which at least he himself owns. A cardinal fea- 
ture of our national policy should be the insuring 
of his rights to this man; and this not only for 
his sake, but for the sake of all of us. 

Normally, he must be the owner of the ground 
he and his sons and his hired man till; and the 
hired man must have conditions shaped so that 
if he is hardworking, thrifty and energetic he 
shall have the means and the opportunity himself 
to purchase farming land on which to dwell and 
to bring up his family. We ought now to formu- 
late, and we ought long ago to have formulated, 
an American agricultural policy ; and the national 
agricultural department should be completely re- 
organized and its activities made far more pro- 
ductive than at present, especially in view of the 
large sum of money now allotted it. Normally, 
in farming regions, where the land is agricultural 
land, tenancy should be recognized only as a tran- 
sitional and temporary phase, and normally the 
working farmer should himself be the landowner ; 
and legislation to secure this should at once be 
enacted. In different sections of the country 
there are different needs, and therefore different 


968 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [Aug. 


methods of meeting the needs will be necessary ; 
nor do I now intend to define them; for the rem- 
edies may be cumulative, and may include pro- 
gressive taxation of land holdings in excess of a 
quarter section or at most a half section, the 
rights of tenants to compensation for all improve- 
ments or indeed a certain property right to the 
land itself, and real, not nominal, provision by the 
government for loaning money to those who need 
it in order to buy themselves a freehold. There 
must be improved methods of farm financing 
with emphasis on the getting and spending more 
money on the farms that are worth while. The 
high roads must be developed. Drastic action 
should be taken to stop the purchase of agricul- 
tural land for speculative purchasers ; where nec- 
essary this should go to the length of giving full 
title to the occupant for use only, and limiting his 
power of alienating the land. System of market- 
ing must be developed, so as to do away with the 
hold-up methods that in so many places still ob- 
tain. The producer must get more, and the con- 
sumer pay less, than at present; and both these 
ends can be and have been attained by proper 
legislation. 

We ought to do these and the many other 
things necessary now, when it is possible to do 
them without causing too great distress to those 
in possession of long undisputed privileges which 
by time have grown to possess much of the char- 
acter of rights. Nuine-tenths of wisdom is be- 
ing wise in time. In this country tenant farm- 
ing and the individual ownership of extensive 
tracts of agricultural land are growing at the ex- 
pense of the homestead holders. Let us take 
whatever steps — conservative, if possible, radi- 


1918] YANKEE VERSUS GERMAN BLOOD 969 


cal, if necessary —are needed to remedy the 
situation ; for if left unremedied the result may 
be something unpleasantly near revolution a half 
century hence; and in such case the wrongs will 
be remedied only by action which causes other 
wrongs to innocent people and works deep de- 
moralization to those benefited; whereas at pres- 
ent by the exercise of forethought and resolution 
Wwe may escape both kinds of evil. 

There are certain things the state can do and 
must do for the farmer. But most things the 
farmer can do for himself by association with his 
fellow farmers, and such independence of unnec- 
essary state action is healthy in itself and is con- 
sonant with the rugged self-reliance characteristic 
of that most typical of American citizen, the 
American who dwells in the open country and 
tills the soil with his own hands. There must be 
cooperation on a large scale among farmers, in 
marketing their products so as to get them as 
nearly as possible direct to the consumer, and in 
purchasing at least all of their needed goods that 
can be standardized ; and gradually in other ways 
also. Whatever can be done by such codpera- 
tion rather than by the state should be done: but 
where such codperation proves inadequate to 
achieve the end, whether in shipping, storing or 
marketing, the state must itself assume the task. 

Any such cooperative association should deal 
with the work that peculiarly affects farmers. 
Therefore it should most emphatically not be 
turned into a political party ; and a political party 
whivh goes into politics as such is just as much 
a political party even although it chooses to call 
itself by some name with non-partisan init. Any 
party which represents purely a class of our citi- 


970 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [Aug. 


zens inevitably works mischief. It is just as 
bad to have public servants who represent no- 
body but farmers as to have public servants 
who do not represent farmers. Our public serv- 
ants are in honor bound to represent all of us, and 
not merely a few of us; and unless they represent 
all of us, and work sincerely and wisely for the 
permanent benefit of all of us, then they do not 
really and permanently represent any of us. In- 
dividually some of us are farmers, others work- 
ingmen, others business people, others doctors or 
lawyers or writers, or clergymen; but in addition 
we are all of us Americans first and foremost; 
and in government our common interest as decent 
citizens comes ahead of the separate interest of 
any of us. It is wise and it may be necessary 
that we shall individually belong to any one of 
various unions or associations or leagues or cor- 
porations ; but there is one union to which all of 
us belong and to which our first allegiance is al- 
ways due, and that union is the United States. 


LAFAYETTE — MARNE-DAY ADDRESS 


DELIVERED ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF 
LAFAYETTE AND OF THE BATTLE OF THE 
MARNE, IN THE ALDERMANIC CHAMBERS, CITY 
HALL, NEW YORK, ON SEPTEMBER 6, 1918. 


LAFAYETTE Day commemorates the services 
rendered to America in the Revolution by France. 
I wish to insist with all possible emphasis that 
in the present war France and England and Italy 
and the other allies have rendered us a similar 
service. The French at the Battle of the Marne 


1918] LAFAYETTE 975 


four years ago and at Verdun, and the British at 
Ypres —in short the French, the English, the 
Italians, the Belgians, the Serbians have been 
fighting for us when they were fighting for them- 
selves. Our army on the other side is now re- 
paying in part our debt, and next year we have 
every reason to hope, and we must insist, that 
the fighting army in France from the United 
States shall surpass in numbers the fighting army 
im France, of either France or England. It is 
now time—, and it long has been time — for 
America to bear her full share of the common 
burden borne by all the allies in this great war 
for liberty and justice. 

We must win the war as speedily as possible. 
But we must set ourselves to fight it through no 
matter how long it takes with resolute determina- 
tion to accept no peace until, no matter at what 
cost, we win the peace of overwhelming victory. 
The peace that we win must guarantee full 
reparation for the awful cost of life and treasure 
which the Prussianized Germany of the Hohen- 
zollerns has inflicted on the entire world ; and this 
reparation must take the form of action that will 
render it impossible for Germany to repeat her 
colossal wrongdoing. Germany has been able to 
wage this fight for world dominion because she 
has subdued to her purpose her vassal allies, Aus- 
tria, Turkey and Bulgaria. Serbia and Rou- 
maiia must have restored to them what Bulgaria 
has taken from them. The Austrian and Turk- 
ish Empires must both be broken up, all the sub- 
ject peoples liberated, and the Turk driven from 
Europe. We do not intend that Germany or 
Magyar should be oppressed by others, but 
neither do we intend that they shall oppress and 


972 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [Sept. 


domineer others. France must receive back Al- 
sace and Lorraine. Belgium must be restored 
and indemnified. Italian Austria must be re- 
stored to Italy, and Roumanian Hungary to Rou- 
mania. The heroic Czecho-Slovaks must be made 
into an independent commonwealth. The south- 
ern Slavs must be united in a great Jugo-Slav 
commonwealth. Poland as a genuinely independ- 
ent commonwealth must receive back Austrian 
and Prussian Poland, as well as Russian Poland, 
and have her coast-line on the Baltic. Lithuania 
and Finland must be guaranteed their freedom 
and no part of the ancient Empire of Russia left 
under the German yoke. Northern Schlesswig 
should go back to the Danes. Britain and Japan 
should keep the colonies they have conquered. 
Armenia must be freed, Palestine made a Jewish 
state, and the Syrian Christians liberated. 

It is sometimes announced that part of the 
peace agreement must be a League of Nations 
which will avert all war for the future and put 
a stop to the need of this nation preparing its 
own strength for its own defense. Many of the 
adherents of this idea grandiloquently assert that 
they intend to supplant nationalism by interna- 
tionalism. 

In deciding upon proposals of this nature it be- 
hooves our people to remember that competitive 
rhetoric is a poor substitute for the habit of reso- 
lutely looking facts in the face. Patriotism 
stands in national matters as love of family does 
in private life. Nationalism corresponds to the 
love a man bears for his wife and children. In- 
ternationalism corresponds to the feeling he has 
for his neighbors generally. The sound national- 
ist is the only type of really helpful internation- 


1918] LAFAYETTE 073 


alist, precisely as in private relations it is the 
man who is most devoted to his own wife and 
children who is apt in the long run to be the 
most satisfactory neighbor. To substitute inter- 
nationalism for nationalism means to do away 
with patriotism, and is as vicious and as pro- 
foundly demoralizing as to put promiscuous de- 
votion to all other persons in the place of stead- 
fast devotion to a man’s own family. Either 
effort means the atrophy of robust morality. 
The man who loves other countries as much as 
his own stands on a level with the man who 
loves other women as much as he loves his own 
wife. One is as worthless a creature as the 
other. The professional pacifist and the profes- 
sional internationalist are equally undesirable cit- 
izens. The American pacifist has in the actual 
fact shown himself to be the tool and ally of 
the German militarist. The professional inter- 
nationalist is a man who under a pretense of dif- 
fuse attachment for everybody hides the fact that 
in reality he is incapable of doing his duty by 
anybody. 

We Americans should abhor all wrongdoing 
to other nations. We ought always to act fairly 
and generously by other nations. But we must 
remember that our first duty is to be loyal and 
patriotic citizens of aur own nation, of America. 
These two facts should always be in our minds 
in dealing with any proposal for a League of Na- 
tions. By all means let us be loyal to great ideals. 
But let us remember that unless we show com- 
mon sense in action, loyalty in speech will amount 
to considerably less than nothing. 

Test the proposed future League of Nations so 
far as concerns proposals to disarm and to trust 


974. NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [Sept. 


to anything except our own strength for our own 
defense, by what the Nations are actually doing at 
the present time. Any such League would have 
to depend for its success upon the adhesion of 
nine nations which are actually or potentially the 
most powerful military nations; and these nine 
nations include Germany, Austria, Turkey and 
Russia. The first three have recently and re- 
peatedly violated and are now actively and con- 
tinuously violating not only every treaty, but 
every rule of civilized warfare and of interna- 
tional good faith. Russia played a heroic part 
for the first three years of the war (during the 
first two and a half years her conduct was in 
shining contrast to ours). But during the last 
year Russia under the dominion of the Bolshevists 
has betrayed her allies, has become the tool of 
the German autocracy, and has shown such utter 
disregard of her national honor and plighted 
word and her international duties that she is now 
in externa! affairs the passive tool and ally of 
her brutal conqueror, Germany. What earthly 
use is it to pretend that the safety of the world 
would be secured by a League in which these four 
nations under the Hohenzollerns and the Haps- 
burgs, under the Sultan and the Bolshevists, 
would be among the nine leading partners? Long 
years must pass before we can again trust any 
promises these four nations make. Any treaty 
of any kind or sort which we make with them 
should be made with the full understanding that 
they will cynically repudiate it whenever they 
think it to their interest to do so. Therefore, 
unless our folly is such that it will not depart 
from us until we are brayed in a mortar let 
us remember that any such treaty will be worth- 


1918] LAFAYETTE 975 


less unless our own prepared strength renders it 
unsafe to break it. 

After this war the wrong-doers will be so pun- 
ished and exhausted that they may for a number 
of years wish to keep the peace. But the surest 
way to make them keep the peace in the future is 
to punish them heavily now. And don’t forget 
that China is now useless as a prop to a League 
of Peace simply because she lacks effective mili- 
tary strength for her own defense. 

Let us support any reasonable plan whether in 
the form of a League of Nations or in any other 
shape, which bids fair to lessen the probable 
number of future wars and to limit their scope. 
But let us laugh out of court any assertion that 
any such plan will guarantee peace and safety to 
the foolish, weak or timid creatures who have 
not the will and the power to prepare for their 
own defense. Support any such plan which is 
honest and reasonable. But support it as an ad- 
dition to, and never as a substitute for, the policy 
of preparing our own strength for our own de- 
fense. To follow any other course would turn 
this country into the China of the Occident. We 
cannot guarantee for ourselves or our children 
peace without effort or safety without service 
and sacrifice. We must prepare both our souls 
and our bodies, in virile fashion, alike to secure 
justice for ourselves and to do justice to others. 
Only thus can we secure our own national self- 
respect. Only thus can we secure the respect of 
other nations and the power to aid them when 
they seek to do well. 

In sum then I shall be delighted to support the 
movement for a League to Enforce Peace, or 
for a League of Nations, if it is developed as a 


076 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Sept. 


supplement to and not a substitute for the prep- 
aration of our own strength. I believe that this 
preparation should be by the introduction in this 
country of the principle of universal training and 
universal service, as practiced in Switzerlana and 
modified, of course, both along the lines indicated 
in Australia and in accordance with our own 
needs. There will be no taint of Prussian mili- 
tarism in such a system. It will merely mean 
prepared ability to fight for our own self-defense, 
and for a great democracy in which law, order 
and liberty are to prevail. 


AMERICANS MUST STAND TOGETHER 
OR HANG TOGETHER 


FROM AN ADDRESS OPENING THE FOURTH LIBERTY 
LOAN CAMPAIGN AT BALTIMORE, MARYLAND, ON 
SEPTEMBER 28, 1918 


To-pay we are gathered to back up the govern- 
ment in its call to our people to subscribe to the 
Fourth Liberty loan. It is our duty not only to 
subscribe to it, but to over subscribe to it, and 
thereby to make our own men on the other side 
and our enemies on the other side understand how 
heartily and loyally the people of the United 
States are back of this war. Moreover in asking 
our people to subscribe to this loan I am asking 
them to display wisdom, but not self-sacrifice. 
There are plenty of war activities where there 
must be some sacrifice. Of course, the men at 
the front and their mothers and wives at home 
are making the supreme sacrifice and are render- 
ing the supreme service. All that the rest of us 


1918] STAND OR HANG TOGETHER 977 


can do is simply to back up these men at the 
front. Of course, when we give money for war 
charities or cheerfully pay our taxes or do any 
of the hundred things we ought to do to aid in the 
war, we are making to some extent a sacrifice — 
although it is too trivial a sacrifice to be even 
alluded to in connection with the sacrifice made 
by the men at the front. But in subscribing to 
the Liberty bonds we are benefiting ourselves. 
The interest is good and the security is the very 
best in the world. Whoever subscribes is certain 
to get his money back, unless Uncle Sam bursts 
up, and in that event it won’t matter, because 
every one of us will burst up too. In other 
words, the security is the best in the world, and 
we are helping ourselves and encouraging habits 
of thrift and foresight and prudence at the same 
time that we are helping Uncle Sam. The bonds 
are so arranged that every one can take them and 
every human being in the country ought to take 
either a Liberty bond or Thrift stamps. We 
should make the bondholders and the people inter- 
changeable terms. It is not the obligation of the 
government officials to raise and furnish the 
money. That, my fellow citizens, is your obliga- 
tion, our obligation, and duty. We must in the 
heartiest and most generous spirit raise the 
money. Then, when it has been raised, it is the 
duty of the officials to see that it is well and wisely 
spent. 

It is our business to give the government all 
the money it demands, whether in taxes or in 
loans. It is our business to back up every offi- 
cial, wholly without regard to party, so long as 
he does his duty efficiently in speeding up the war, 
so that we may secure the peace of overwhelming 


978 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [Sept. 


victory. It is also our business to see that every 
official actually does his duty and that of the 
money appropriated, every dollar spent represents 
Ioo cents worth of service to the army and the 
public. It is the duty of the executive officials of 
the government to demand all the money that is 
necessary in order to render the great service that 
is necessary. It is the duty of the congressmen 
to give this money freely, to back up the render- 
ing of the service, and to insist that it be ren- 
dered; and it is also their duty to see that we get 
the proper return for the money spent. I don’t 
care how heavy the taxes or how big the loans, 
I will not only stand for them all but insist upon 
them all, and I believe our people will stand for 
them all, right up to the bed rock dollar of the 
nation, if it is necessary in order to put this war 
through, until Germany is brought to her knees. 
But I believe I speak for the nation, and I know 
I speak for myself, when I say that we intend to 
see that the money produces results. Therefore 
it is our clear duty to send to congress men who 
will take this attitude. There must be no skimp- 
ing, no niggardliness when the nation’s honor and _ 
vital interests are at stake. Our representatives 
must give the executive officers all the assistance, 
all the money that is necessary. But it is their 
clear duty to investigate.and supervise and see 
that the money is well and wisely spent by these 
executive officials, and that from now on our men 
who fight at the front are backed with the air- 
planes and the field cannons and the tanks and the 
machine guns for which we have paid. 

It is no less our duty and the duty of our goy- 
ernmental representatives both to hurry up the 
war so that it may be finished as speedily as pos- 


1918] STAND OR HANG TOGETHER 979 


sible and also to show such foresight in prepared- 
ness that we shall be ready with overwhelming 
forces to fight it through, no matter how long it 
takes. We must be content with no peace except 
a peace dictated by the victorious allies, a peace 
which will leave Germany and her vassal states 
powerless to repeat the hideous wrongdoing which 
for over four years has plunged the world into a 
sea of slaughter. We do not intend that Ger- 
many shall be oppressed, but neither do we intend 
she shall be able to oppress us. She must be 
punished, if the dreadful wrongs she has inflicted 
on France and Belgium are really to be righted. 
Therefore, the Turk must be driven from Europe 
and the races subject to him be given their free- 
dom. Therefore, the Austrian empire must be 
broken up and the German strangle-hold removed 
from Russia. All Roumanians and all Italians 
must be united to Roumania and Italy. The 
Jugo-Slavs, the Czecho-Slovaks and the Poles 
must be made into independent commonwealths ; 
Finland, the Baltic provinces and the Ukraine 
must be made free not merely of Russia, but of 
Germany also. As for poor Russia herself, we 
earnestly wish we could help her. We will help 
her when she allows us to. She fought valiantly 
and suffered terribly during the early years of 
the war, while this nation was still neutral and 
was making a profit out of the awful struggle. 
But under the Bolshevists Russia has become an 
ally of Germany — an enemy of the free peoples. 

Weare fighting for our dearest rights. Weare 
also fighting for the rights of all people, small or 
great, so long as they are well-behaved and do not 
wrong others, to enjoy their liberty and govern 
themselves in the forms they see fit to adopt. We 


980 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [Sept 


intend to try to help others, but we know well that 
we cannot do so unless we are able to do justice 
within our own borders and to manage well the 
affairs of our own household. Therefore it be- 
hooves us even now, while we are bending all our 
energies to winning the great war, also to look to 
the future and to begin to ponder the things that 
we must do to bring greater happiness and well- 
being and a higher standard of conduct and char- 
acter within our own borders when once the war 
is through. 

Surely friends, all of us and especially those 
of us who stay at home and who are denied the 
opportunity to go to the front, ought to realize 
the need in this country of a loftier idealism than 
we have had in the past ; and the further and even 
greater need that we should in actual practice live 
up to the ideals we profess. The things of the 
body have a rightful place and a great place. 
But the things of the soul should have an even 
greater place. There has been in the past in this 
country far too much of that gross materialism 
which in the end eats like an acid into all the 
finer qualities of our souls. 

The war came—our gross ideals were shat- 
tered and the scales fell from our eyes and we 
saw things as they really were. Suddenly in the 
awful presence of death we grew to understand 
the true value of life. We realized that only 
those men were fit to live who were not afraid 
to die; that although death was a terrible thing, 
yet that there were other things that were more 
terrible, other things that made life not worth 
living. All the finest of our young men, all those 
of high souls, responded eagerly to the call to 
arms, the son of the rich. man and the son of the 


1918] STAND OR HANG TOGETHER 981 


poor man, side by side, neither claiming any 
favor except the chance to win honor and perform 
duty in the face of deadly peril. These men who 
have been going and are going abroad by the mil- 
lions are sacrificing everything for the sake of a 
great ideal. They have shown their willingness 
to sacrifice money and ease and pleasure and life 
itself when duty calls and the nation bids them 
go. 
Let us who are left behind in our turn strive to 
make our lives a little nearer the right ideal. Let 
us introduce into the work of peace something of 
the spirit that they have introduced into the work 
of war. When these men come home, or at 
least when those of them who escape death come 
home, I believe that they will demand and I know 
that they ought to demand a juster type of life, 
socially and industrially, in this country. I be- 
lieve, and I hope, that they will demand a loftier 
idealism in both our public and private affairs, 
and better and more common sense methods of 
reducing our ideals to practice and making them 
realizable. I believe that they will themselves 
show both idealism and also that common sense 
the lack of which insures disaster in peace as in 
war. I think they will insist upon a livelier sense 
of brotherhood and yet will no less insist upon 
the duty of recognizing leadership. Let the dif- 
ference of reward be as great as that between our 
generals and admirals, such as Pershing and Sims, 
and the warrant officers or senior non-commis- 
sioned officers under them. But let there be a 
better proportion than is now the case in indus- 
trial life between the service rendered and the 
reward given. Gradually I hope to see the wage- 
worker become in a real sense a partner in the 


982 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [Sept. 


enterprise in which he works; and to achieve this 
end he must develop the power of self-control, the 
power of recognizing the rights of others no less 
than insisting upon his own; he must develop 
common sense, and that strength of character 
which cannot be conferred from without, and the 
lack of which renders everything else of no avail. 
Above all, I wish to see that farmers develop their 
strength by cooperation so that the elemental work 
of the soil will resume its ancient importance 
among us. 

At this moment we can only lay the foundation 
in outline; but there are certain things that we 
should do at once in connection with the war. 
One of them is to stop all profiteering by capital- 
ists, and another is to stop all slacking and loafing 
whether by individual workmen or as a result of 
union action. Of these two perhaps the profiteer 
is worse, but the slacker is almost as bad. As for 
the profiteer, any man who makes a fortune out 
of this war ought to be held up to derision and 
scorn. No man should come out of this war ma- 
terially ahead of what he was when we went 
into it. There must be the reward for capital 
necessary in order to make it profitable to do the 
necessary work and to cover the necessary risks ; 
this is indispensable, and the government should 
see that neither demagogy nor ignorance inter- 
feres with this necessary reward. But we heart- 
ily approve, as a war measure, heavy progressive 
taxation of all profits, beyond the reasonable prof- 
its necessary for the continuance of industry. 
Most of our captains of finance are doing with all 
their energy necessary governmental work with- 
out any financial reward for themselves. I honor 
these men, I honor their sons who have gone to 


1918] STAND OR HANG TOGETHER 983 


the war. But I have scant patience with the other 
men who treat the war merely as a chance for 
profit ; and I have least patience with the rich men 
who keep their sons at home. I will not excuse 
the poor man from going to war; but I would 
make it obligatory on the man who has much. As 
for the profiteer if I could get at him I would like 
to put him to digging the front trenches. And 
I would put beside him his brother in wrongdoing, 
the slacker or loafer, the man who limits the out- 
put when it is necessary at this time that we 
should have the greatest possible production ; and 
I would do this whether he was acting as an indi- 
vidual or an official or member of a labor union. 
Pershing’s men are not limiting their output, and 
shame and disgrace should be the portion of any 
man who limits his output here at home. 

In all things I would keep just as far from 
Bolshevism as from kaiserism. In this country 
the Germanized socialists have shown themselves 
in their true light as the enemies of the republic; 
and I would permit no enemies of the republic to 
be at large while the republic is at death-grips 
with a foreign foe. I am utterly against every 
species of anarchy, and therefore I am against 
Bolshevism in all its forms; but I am equally 
against the gross industrial and social abuses 
which tend to promote the growth of anarchy 
and of Bolshevism and of Germanized socialism. 

From the days when civilized man first began 
to strive for self-government and democracy suc- 
cess has depended primarily upon the ability to 
steer clear of extremes. For almost its entire 
length the course lies between Scylla and Charyb- 
dis; and the heated extremists who insist upon 
avoiding only one gulf of destruction invariably 


984 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [Sept. 


land in the other — and then take refuge in the 
meager consolation afforded by denouncing as 
“ inconsistent ” the pilot who strives to avoid both. 
Order without liberty and liberty without order 
are equality destructive; special privilege for the 
few and special privilege for the many are alike 
profoundly anti-social; the fact that unlimited 
individualism is ruinous in no way alters the fact 
that unlimited state socialism spells ruin of a dif- 
ferent kind. All of this ought to be trite to rea- 
sonably intelligent people — even if they are pro- 
fessional intellectuals — but in practice an end- 
less insistence on these simple fundamental truths 
is endlessly necessary. 

Before our eyes the unfortunate Russian nation 
furnishes an example on a gigantic scale of what 
to avoid in oscillating between extremes. The 
autocratic and bureaucratic despotism of the Ro- 
manoffs combined extreme tyranny with extreme 
inefficiency ; and the Bolshevists have turned the 
revolution into a veritable witches Sabbath of 
anarchy, plunder, murder, utterly faithless treach- 
ery and inefficiency carried to the verge of com- 
plete disintegration. Each side sought salvation 
by formulas which were condemned alike by com- 
mon sense and common morality and which their 
own actions belied. 

I believe that when this war is over we should 
prepare for our self-defense against other nations, 
and I believe we should prepare for our own 
inner development. And in order to meet both 
needs, I believe in the principle of universal serv- 
ice. Of this, military service is but a part. It 
is a vital part and under no circumstances can we 
neglect it. But itis only a part. Universal suf- 
frage can be justified only by universal service, 


1918] STAND OR HANG TOGETHER 985 


service in peace and service in war. The man 
who will not render this service has no right to 
the vote. If he won’t fight for the country in 
war and do his duty by the country in peace, we 
ought not to permit him to vote in the country. 
The conscientious objector, who won’t serve as a 
soldier or won’t pay his taxes, has no place in a 
republic like ours, and should be expelled from 
it, for no man who won't pull his weight in the 
boat has a right in the boat. The society of 
Friends have come forward in this war just as 
gallantly as they came forward in the Civil War, 
and all true believers in peace will do well to 
follow their example. 

We now have an approach to the universal 
service which some of us have for many years 
been demanding. We now have all men from 18 
to 45 required to serve their country, and re- 
quired to register. Let us make this system per- 
manent and let us use it for the purposes of 
peace no less than for the purposes of war. Let 
us extend the principle to women no less than to 
men. Let us have suffrage on service. Let us 
demand the service from women as we do from 
men, and in return give the suffrage to all men 
and women who in peace and war perform the 
service, and to no others. Base suffrage on serv- 
ice and not on sex. Treat it not as an unearned 
privilege, but as a duty which each of us is to per- 
form in a spirit of service to all of us, and asa 
right which is not to be enjoyed unless the person 
enjoying it does his or her full duty in peace and 
war. 

Universal training is a pre-requisite for efficient 
universal service. It is just as much a pre-requi- 
site for efficient service in war as for efficient 


986 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [Sept. 


service in peace. It is just as much a pre-requi- 
site for women as for men. At this moment we 
have embodied in law the principle of universal 
military service for men, but inasmuch as there 
has never been universal obligatory military train- 
ing for the service we now have to do all this 
training during the war itself. In consequence 
we were not able to exert any considerable frac- 
tion of our man power until over a year after we 
went to war, and over two will have elapsed be- 
fore the proportion of our strength thus actually 
usable and used will be anywhere near as great 
as the proportion of the French, English or Italian 
strength thus used. This means that during the 
first year of the war we would have been abso- 
lutely helpless, and during the first year and a 
half almost helpless, against our antagonists if 
we had not been protected by the armies and 
navies of our allies. In other words, while we 
were hardening our unprepared and helpless 
strength, and making it ready, we were saved 
from the strength and fury of our enemy only by 
the strength and valor of our allies. We now 
have universal military service. If four years 
ago we had had universal military training, so 
that the service would have been immediately 
efficient when called for, the war would have been 
over within go days from the time we entered it, 
and infinite bloodshed and treasure would have 
been spared. Next time we may not have allies 
to protect us. And even if we do have allies, let 
us remember that our latent strength is such that 
if we prepare it in advance, the chances are strong 
for our imposing an almost immediate peace in 
any conflict into which we are obliged to enter; 
whereas, if we do not prepare it in advance we 


1918] STAND OR HANG TOGETHER 0987 


are doomed to impotence in any war unless we 
have allies who protect us during the year or two 
we spend in hurried and extravagant effort to do 
what we ought to have already done. 

I am not advocating Prussian militarism. I 
am advocating the kind of democratic prepared- 
ness which Switzerland has developed to her own 
great advantage, socially and economically, and 
with the result of keeping war out of her borders. 
I refer you to our own experience of the last 
year. I believe that our training camps have been 
universities of applied Americanism. I believe 
that for every young man between the ages of 
18 and 20 to have six months in such a camp, 
which would include, of course, some field service, 
would be of incalculable benefit to him, and of like 
benefit to the nation. It would teach him self- 
reliance, self-respect, mutuality of respect be- 
tween himself and others, the power to command 
and the power to obey; it would teach him habits 
oi cleanliness and order and the power of co- 
operation ; and above all devotion to the flag, the 
ideal of country. It would make him a soldier 
immediately fit for defense and readily to be 
turned into a soldier fit for offensive work if, as 
in the present war, offense prove the only method 
of real defense. I believe that every such man, 
after his experience in the camp, would tend to be 
a better citizen and would tend to do his own 
work for himself and his family better and with 
more efficient result. I believe it would help him 
in material matters and at the same time would 
teach him to put certain great spiritual ideals in 
the foremost place. 

Incidentally, if I had my way, I would change 
the drait rules now, so far as giving any special 


98 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [{Sept. 


privileges to the young fellows between 18 and 
20 in the matter of college training, to fit them to 
be officers. To say that the nation will pay for 
all of them to go to college is a deception, and to 
believe it is a delusion. I do not believe in a 
selective draft for a favored class. I wish to see 
fair play for the workman’s son who has not had 
the chance to learn so that he can go to college, 
but who has the natural ability to command and 
lead men. Only boys whose parents, in the past, 
have had the money to give them a special educa- 
tion can enter college at the present time, and it 
is unfair to the other boys to give these a special 
advantage. Let all go into the ranks together and 
after six months or a year of service the best men 
to be chosen out. Of course with the older men 
and at the beginning we had to take those already 
available. But when we come to need the young 
fellows under 21 let every man enter the ranks 
and stand on fair footing with every one else, and 
be given promotion on his merits. Hitherto the 
men who came in under 21 came in as volunteers, 
and they were entitled to try for any position they 
could get, but now we have at last done what we 
ought to have done in the beginning. Now let 
them all stand alike. 

Therefore, I hope that now we will make the 
system of universal military service and military 
training which we have introduced permanent, al- 
though of course in modified form. But I would 
not stop here. I would use the registration of all 
our men as a basis for further development for 
training and service in the duties of peace. I 
would register the young women just as much as 
the young men. I would give them both certain 
fundamental forms of industrial training — train- 


1918] STAND OR HANG TOGETHER 989 


ing in the things that are fundamental in the 
ordinary work of the ordinary man and woman in 
their business occupations and in and around their 
home; in the things which it is good for every 
man and woman to know. I mean certain forms 
of manual labor and mechanical labor for men, 
and certain forms of household work and work 
outside of the house for women. The teaching 
in the schools should be only in English; in this 
country there is room for but one flag and for 
but one language. I believe in education. I be- 
lieve in giving it Iree to every man and every 
woman, because I don’t think we can have a 
successful democracy unless it is an educated one. 
I believe in making it obligatory so far as pri- 
mary education is concerned; and I believe in 
making it possible for every man or woman who 
really desires it to have a higher education, but 
that this shall be permissive and not obligatory. 
Moreover, I believe that the education shall be 
an education not only of the mind but also of the 
soul and the body. I think we should educate 
men and women toward and not away from what 
is to be their life work, toward the home, toward 
the farm, toward the shop — and not away: from 
them. I would use the introduction of a system 
of universal training and service as a means for 
securing this education. 

I mention education only as one of the aims we 
ought to have in view in connection with universal 
training of our citizenship for service. There are 
very many lines of endeavor in such an effort of 
constructive statesmanship ; for construction and 
not destruction should be the keynote of our 
policy at this time. Our educational system 
should deal especially with all immigrants; and a 


990 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [Sept. 


peculiarly important branch of it at the present 
time ought to be the training of the disabled and 
the crippled returning soldiers so that they may 
become not objects of charity, but self-supporting 
citizens. We should develop the water powers 
under the government, keeping ownership in the 
public, and preventing the pollution of interstate 
streams. We should begin at once to take 
thought for the soldiers when they return; to de- 
velop national employment agencies for the redis- 
tribution of men after the war. We should enter 
on a course of taxation, purchase and develop- 
ment of land so as to give to the returned soldier 
who is fit for it the chance to do the most vital 
of all works, to till the soil on the farm which he 
himself owns; and we can treat this as a stepping 
stone to further study of and action concerning 
country life and farm production so as to promote 
the growth and prosperity of the farmers who 
work hard on their own land. We must prepare 
our shipping for times of peace, and prepare to 
deal with the foreign markets situation, as part of 
our program of wise universal service, and, what 
is even more important, we can deal on a national 
scale with factory and industrial conditions, city 
and country housing conditions, child labor, and 
old age, health and unemployment insurance for 
workers. As for the needs of the moment, let us 
act with drastic severity, much greater severity 
than at present, against German spies and pro- 
German traitors. ‘There is room for no half-and- 
half loyalty in this country ; every man who has 
the slightest feeling in favor of Germany should 
be interned or sent out of the country, and if he 
is guilty of serious disloyalty he should be shot or 
hung. Let us go to the limit against every pro- 


1918] WILSON AND LINCOLN COMPARED 991 


German and in uncompromising insistence that 
we speed up the war and fight it through until we 
beat Germany to her knees and impose our own 
peace on her. But save in the case of spies and 
traitors and preachers of sedition, let us insist on 
a free press and free speech, for a free press and 
free speech are the .foundation-stones of self-gov- 
ernment by a free people. Let us make our be- 
lated intervention in Russia more effective both as 
regards military measures against the Germans 
and the pro-German Russians and as regards 
friendly economic relief and aid for the mass of 
the Russian people. Now is the time to accom- 
plish constructive work which will make us strong 
for the conflict and able to deal with the after- 
math of the conflict, and the step to be taken at 
this moment is to back up the fourth Liberty loan. 


WHAT WILSON DID AND 
LINCOLN DIDN’T 


A NOTABLE ADDRESS DELIVERED AT CARNEGIE HALL, 
NEW YORK, ON OCTOBER 28, 1918 


I come to this meeting as an American, and only 
as an American. In this crisis I do not consider 
politics at all whenever doing so conflicts in the 
slightest degree with the great cause of American- 
ism or with our immediate purpose of winning the 
war and of securing the peace of unconditional 
surrender by Germany. I will support no dis- 
loyal man on any ticket and no man who is not 
heartily in favor of winning the war and of the 
peace of overwhelming victory. I make my ap- 
peal to all good Americans, in the name of Amer- 


992 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Oct. 


icanism, and I make it just as much to all inde- 
pendents and to all far-sighted, patriotic Demo- 
crats who are awake to the real needs of the situ- 
ation as I do to Republicans. Americanism 
means that in this country there is to be loyalty to 
only one flag — the American flag — and that we 
will permit no fifty-fifty loyalty, no loyalty to any 
foreign flag and no loyalty either to the red flag 
of anarchy or to the black flag of international or 
Germanized socialism. During the last four 
years international socialism has shown itself the 
enemy of all the liberty-loving nations and the 
tool of the capitalistic and militaristic tyranny of 
the Hohenzollerns. When applied by its leading 
practical advocates, according to the Stark- 
Marxian formulas of class consciousness and 
class hatred, it has thrown Russia into hideous 
ruin; so that at this moment, while autocratic 
Germany is dangerous to all liberty-loving peoples 
as a man-eating wild beast is dangerous, Russia 
is dangerous because she has become a plague spot 
of infection and misery for the nations of man- 
kind. In this country we must steer equally clear 
of Kaiserism and of Bolshevism, for if we swerve 
toward either we swerve toward the gulfs of ruin. 

This meeting is held under peculiar circum- 
stances. If the President of the United States 
is right in the appeal he has just made to the 
voters, then you and I, my hearers, have no right 
to vote at this election or to discuss public ques- 
tions while the war lasts. If his appeal is justi- 
fied, only that faction of the Democratic party 
which accepts towards the President the rubber 
stamp attitude of complete servility is entitled to 
control Congress; and no man who is a Republi- 
can, and no man whether a Republican or not who 


1918] WILSON AND LINCOLN COMPARED 993 


puts loyalty to the people ahead of loyalty to the 
servant of the people, is to have a voice in deter- 
mining the greatest questions ever brought before 
this Nation. 

In this election appeal which the President has 
issued to the voters of the country he states that 
he “earnestly begs” the voters to return “a 
Democratic majority to both the Senate and the 
House of Representatives,’ and that although 
“the leaders of the minority in the present Con- 
gress have unquestionably been pro-war they have 
been anti-administration,” and that “the return 
of a Republican majority to either House of Con- 
gress would certainly be interpreted on the other 
side of the water as a repudiation of my (Presi- 
dent Wilson’s) leadership.” 

This is an extraordinary document. It is an 
emphatic repudiation and reversal of the Presi- 
dent’s announcement of a few months back that 
“politics is adjourned.” It casts the gravest 
doubt on the sincerity of that announcement; and 
indeed for the last few months the Democratic 
party organization, acting with the support and 
direction of the President’s closest advisers, such 
as Messrs. Burleson and Creel, has been working 
with naked eagerness for partisan success, and 
has displayed a greedy unscrupulousness as to 
methods and a complete subordination of national 
interest to partisan welfare never before known 
in our history during a great war. When this 
war broke out I, and all those who believed as I 
did, cast all thought of politics aside and put our- 
selves unreservedly at the service of the Presi- 
dent. Of course if Mr. Wilson had really meant 
to disregard politics he would at once have con- 
structed a coalition, non-partisan cabinet, calling 


094 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Oct. 


the best men of the nation to the highest and most 
important offices under him, without regard to 
politics. He did nothing of the kind. In the po- 
sitions most vital to the conduct of the war, and 
in the positions now most important in connection 
with negotiating peace, he retained or appointed 
men without the slightest fitness for the perform- 
ance of the tasks, whose sole recommendation was 
a supple eagerness to serve Mr. Wilson person- 
ally and to serve Mr. Wilson’s party insofar as 
such service benefited Mr. Wilson. 

I am glad that Mr. Wilson has now cast off the 
mask. His appeal is now to pure partisanship. 
By his actions (since he announced that politics 
were adjourned) he had already repudiated his 
words; for he had already interfered for purely 
political reasons in the election contents in Wis- 
consin, Illinois, Michigan and many other States. 
Now he openly by formal announcement repudi- 
ates all pretense of putting the public welfare 
above party. Now he declares that this is a party 
war, and that the Republicans, although he admits 
“that they have been unquestionably pro-war,” 
are to be excluded from any share in controlling 
the war. 

Nor is this all. He makes his appeal on behalf 
of the Democratic party. But he is careful to 
qualify it so as to exclude all Democrats who put 
loyalty to the Nation or even loyalty to their party 
principles ahead of adherence to the administra- 
tion. He inno way discriminates between Demo- 
cats who are pro-war and those who are anti-war. 
He asks the exclusion from Congress of the man 
who is anti-administration, without the slightest 
reference to whether he is pro-war or anti-war, 


1918] WILSON AND LINCOLN COMPARED 995 


loyal or disloyal, patriotic or unpatriotic. The 
one test he imposes is loyalty to himself. The 
President of the United States repudiates the po- 
sition of being President of all the people, and 
substitutes for it the position of partisan leader- 
ship of one political faction; while even in this 
faction he makes servile adherence to his adminis- 
tration the test of membership and of the moral 
right of any man to do his share in the great work 
of national self-government. 

Contrast with this the position of Abraham 
Lincoln. In the darkest days of the Civil War, 
Lincoln declined outright to make any party ap- 
peal or to apply any party test or any test save 
that of loyalty in the prosecution of the war and 
loyalty to the Union and to liberty. In March, 
1863, he advocated sending to Congress only 
“unconditional supporters of the war,” making 
no reference to any party; and in June of that 
year, in answer to some correspondents who 
signed themselves as “ Democrats,” he expressed 
his regret that they had not called themselves 
“ American citizens,” saying, “In this time of 
national peril I would have preferred to meet 
you upon a level one step higher than any party 
platform”; and in August, in the only political 
letter he wrote that year, he appealed to “all 
those who maintain unconditional devotion to the 
Union,” and in this appeal he explicitly included 
his own political friends with those of his political 
enemies, “ whom no partisan malice or partisan 
hope can make false to the nation’s life.” He 
thus explicitly based his appeal to pro-war men, 
without asking about their attitude towards him- 
self. Again and again he appealed to “all loyal 


996 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Oct. 


men” and to “all friends of union and liberty ” 
and in 1864 he accepted his nomination as com- 
ing from the “ unconditional Union men.” 

Lincoln made no party test. He appealed to all 
loyal men of all parties. He asked that the test 
of fitness for Congress be, not adherence to his 
personal administration, but unconditional sup- 
port of the war. Mr. Wilson applies the most 
rigid party test. He explicitly repudiates loyalty 
to the war asa test. He demands the success of 
the Democratic party, and asks the defeat of all 
pro-war men if they have been anti-administra- 
tion. He asks for the defeat of pro-war Repub- 
licans. He does not ask for the defeat of anti- 
war Democrats. On the contrary, he supports 
such men if although anti-war they are pro-ad- 
ministration. He does not ask for loyalty to the 
Nation. He asks only for support of himself. 
There is not the slightest suggestion that he dis- 
approves of disloyalty to the nation. I do not 
doubt that he does feel some disapproval of such 
disloyalty ; but apparently this feeling on his part 
is so tepid that it slips from his mind when he 
contemplates what he regards as the far greater 
sin of failure in adherence to himself. 

I ask all patriotic Americans to consider just 
what is meant when the President says that in the 
present Congress “ the leaders of the minority al- 
though unquestionably pro-war have been anti- 
administration.” These leaders supported the 
Administration when a declaration of war was. 
needed. They supported it when there was a de- 
mand for the draft. They supported it when we 
sent the army overseas. They supported every 
demand for money whether by taxation or by 
loans. They supported it or gave it initiative and 


1918] WILSON AND LINCOLN COMPARED 997 


guidance on every issue where it stood for vigor- 
ous prosecution of the war; and they supported it 
on these issues when half the leaders of President 
Wilson’s own party opposed him when he had 
committed himself to war measures—and yet 
President Wilson now makes a partisan appeal 
in favor of the Democrats who opposed the war 
measures and against the Republicans who sup- 
ported them. 

Now, what does Mr. Wilson mean when he 
speaks of these leaders as being, although “ pro- 
war,” yet “anti-administration”? He means 
that when the War Department was administered 
with utter inefficiency they investigated the mat- 
ter and insisted upon efficiency. He means that 
when they found that nothing effective was being 
done in ship-building they insisted that the work 
be speeded up. He means that when they found 
that six hundred million dollars had been spent 
for airplanes and yet that not an airplane had 
reached our soldiers at the front they insisted 
that our soldiers should get the airplanes for 
which the people had paid. Mr. Wilson regards 
it as “anti-administration” to demand that our 
gallant men at the front receive the guns and auto- 
rifles and tanks and airplanes and shoes and cloth- 
ing for which Congress has appropriated so many 
billions of dollars. The entire offense of the 
Republican leaders in Mr. Wilson’s eyes is that 
they have demanded that inefficiency, waste and 
extravagance be remedied. Such a demand he 
‘treats as “ anti-administration.” In other words, 
the attitude which patriotic people regard as pro- 
United States he regards as anti-administration. 

I hold, on the contrary, that these Republican 
leaders have in a great crisis shown complete in- 


998 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Oct. 


difference to party and complete devotion to the 
Union. They have disinterestedly supported Mr. 
Wilson in everything he did that was right, and 
fearlessly opposed him where he was wrong. 
Over half the Democratic leaders whom he is now 
supporting opposed him when he was right, and 
supported him when he was wrong. He urges 
that the people return to Congress the men who 
were anti-war but who shielded the failures of the 
administration. He urges that the people defeat 
for Congress the men who were pro-war but who 
sought to remedy the failures of the administra- 
tion. He puts loyalty to the Nation second, and 
adherence to his personal leadership first. The 
Republican leaders whom he assails have put 
loyalty to the Nation ahead of all other considera- 
tions and have conditioned their support of every 
executive official solely upon the efficiency with 
which that official serves the Nation. 

And I ask you to consider one thing more, you 
Republicans and Independents and you Demo- 
crats who decline to put cringing subservience to 
any man, ahead of the Republic. Indeed, I ap- 
peal most of all to the high-minded and patriotic 
Democrats whose boys are over in the army side 
by side with the boys of their Republican neigh- 
bors, and who do not wish to see these loyal 
neighbors treated as enemies of the Republic. 
President Wilson says that Republicans are not 
good enough to serve the Republic in Congress 
at this time. But they are good enough to die for 
the Republic in the army and navy! They are 
good enough to pay the taxes and subscribe to the 
Loan! We have sent our sons and our brothers 
to spill their blood like water overseas under the 
flag; we have given our strength and our money 


_ 1918] WILSON AND LINCOLN COMPARED 999 


without stint to serve the country at home, to 
float the Loans, to back up the war activities of 
every kind; and now we are told that the blood 
of our sons, and the money saved at the expense 
of our wives and little children, do not entitle us 
to any word in saying how the war is to be 
waged! Or what are the terms on which peace 
is to be made, or what shall be our policies after 
the war! 

Mr. Wilson says that this is no time for divided 
counsels. Yet the Constitution of the United 
States says that he must counsel with the Con- 
gress of the United States. It is mere insolence 
for the servant of the people to say that he will 
not counsel with those other servants of the peo- 
ple whom the people have elected for the express 
purpose of giving himcounsel. The world would 
be better off now by hundreds of thousands of 
fearless lives and by many billions of dollars of 
treasure if Mr. Wilson had been willing to sup- 
plement his own self-sufficient ignorance by the 
counsel of those who would gladly have counseled 
him wisely, but who would not creep into his pres- 
ence as slaves. 

So far as I know, no Democratic Congressman 
has resigned his seat to go to the war. But six 
Republican Congressmen have resigned to go into 
the army, and already one of these has died. 
These men are deemed fit to die for the country; 
but the President says that they and those like 
them are not fit to sit in the councils of the Na- 
tion and to take part in so shaping our policy that 
our men shall not die in vain. The President says 
that this is his war, not the people’s war, and 
that the half of the people who have been most 
resolute in favor of the firm and efficient prosecu- 


1000 }=©0©6NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Oct. 


tion of the war are hereafter to be excluded from 
all share in its management, and from all say-so 
as to the peace which is to crown and justify it. 
We can pay with the blood of our hearts’ dear- 
est ; but that is all that we are to be allowed to do; 
and yct the price we pay, and the peace the Na- 
tion is to get for that price, are to be settled by 
the agency or the aid of the men of cold heart 
who do not fight themselves, whose nearest kin 
are not in danger, who prepared for war not at 
all, who helped wage the war feebly, and who are 
content with a craven peace. 

Mr. Henry Ford has announced that he does 
not believe in patriotism, that he thinks the flag 
is silly and does not believe in it, and that when 
this war is over he will pull the flag down and 
never hoist it again. The son of this multi-mil- 
lionaire stays at home while hundreds of thou- 
sands of men of small means leave their wives 
and children and go to the war. But Mr. Wilson 
is supporting Mr. Ford for the Senate. On the 
other hand, Senator Weeks does believe in patriot- 
ism. He does believe in the war. His only son 
is fighting overseas at this moment facing death 
side by side with his comrades from every rank 
of life. But Mr. Wilson is opposing Mr. Weeks. 
There are dozens of such cases; and the only ex- 
planation possible of the President’s attitude is 
that he makes adherence to his personal fortunes 
and not loyalty to the Nation the acid test in ac- 
cordance with which he gives or withholds sup- 
port. 

The President’s personal organ, The World, 
‘itself says that the present Democratic Congress 
is a “slacker Congress.” And the President asks 
the voters to keep these slackers in control pro- 


1918] WILSON AND LINCOLN COMPARED 1001 


vided only that these slackers follow him with 
abject alacrity in whichever new direction he may 
momentarily lead. Small wonder that in the 
cloakroom of the House the bitter jest circulates: 
“ Here’s to our Czar, last in war, first towards 
peace, long may he waver!” The President says 
he is anxious about the effect on Germany and 
our Allies of the election of a Congress which 
would follow the present Republican leadership 
of the House and Senate. He need be under no 
anxiety. It would be clearly understood abroad 
as at home. Our Allies would know that it 
meant that America was determined to speed up 
the war, to back her own army and the armies 
of the Allies to the limit, to tolerate no corrup- 
tion or inefficiency in waging the war and to in- 
sist on Germany’s unconditional surrender. Ger- 
many and her vassal states would know that in 
this country the pro-Germans and pacifists and 
Bolshevists and Germanized Socialists could no 
longer be counted upon as efficient and tortuous 
tools, that the fighting men and not the rhetori- 
cians were uppermost, and that henceforth the 
Germans would have to deal with the resolute and 
straightforward soul of the American people and 
not merely with the obscure purposes and waver- 
ing will of Mr. Wilson. 

And finally, let our people remember that the 
incoming Congress will deal with the vital ques- 
tions of reconstruction after the war. The 
President proposes to let these questions be dealt 
with by those who control what his personal organ 
calls the present “slacker Congress.” He pro- 
poses to put the reconstruction of the country in 
the hands of these slackers under the guidance of 
such men as Mr. Kitchin, the present leader of 


1002 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Oct. 


the House, and incidentally one of the anti-war 
leaders of the House. Surely the country will 
feel that this work of reconstruction ought to be 
entrusted to other hands, and that these hands 
shall be those of the Republican leaders whose 
vision is for the future and who yet possess prac- 
tical ability to work for the best interests of the 
present. 

I speak at this party meeting only because the 
attitude of the Administration and the attitude of 
the Democratic organization, which is wholly sub- 
servient to the Administration, makes it, in my 
judgment, absolutely imperative upon good citi- 
zens to support the Republican ticket this year 
and to secure the election of a Republican House 
and Senate at Washington. When I speak of the 
Republican party and what it stands for I ask you 
to think not only of the words of the leaders, but 
of their acts in Congress for over a year and a 
half. And by leaders I mean the men like Sen- 
ators Lodge and Poindexter and Johnson and 
Nelson, and Congressmen Fess and Gillett and 
McCormick, and all those like them, and all who 
have taken substantially the attitude that these 
men have taken about the war during the last 
eighteen months, including especially the last 
three weeks ; and I mention the men I have named 
almost at random among their colleagues, and 
only because I wish by illustration to make my 
point absolutely clear. 

I believe in putting this war through to our 
last man and our last dollar rather than to fail in 
beating Germany to her knees. That is the spirit 
of our wonderful fighting men at the front. The 
world has never seen finer fighting men than our 
soldiers at the front. But let this people never 


1918] WILSON AND LINCOLN COMPARED 1003 


forget that in the bitter weather of last winter we 
left our small army overseas without a sufficient 
number of overcoats or shoes; we got uniforms 
from the British, and two-thirds of the ships in 
which we ferried our troops across the ocean were 
from the British ; we got our cannon and our ma- 
chine guns from the hard-pressed French, the 
tanks from the British and French; -we had prac- 
tically no airplanes at the front until seventeen 
months after we went to war — in short, our gov- 
ernmental shortcomings were so lamentable that 
even now we can fight at all only because of the 
weapons our allies give us. 

I hold that it was a foolish and evil thing to 
have failed to prepare during the two years and 
a half after the world war began, and a foolish 
and evil thing to have shown the hesitation and 
delay and incompetency displayed in making our 
strength effective, which we showed for over a 
year after we had finally helplessly drifted stern 
foremost into the war. I hold that it is our duty 
now to insist upon the maximum efficiency and 
upon absolute disregard of all political consid- 
erations in speeding up the war. Let us try 
to win it at once; but let us set ourselves reso- 
lutely to win it, no matter what the cost and 
no matter how long it takes. I hold that it is 
necessary clearly to face the dreadful blunders 
and worse than blunders that have been made in 
order to avoid repeating them in the future. But 
I hold with even greater tenacity that it is our 
duty to treat these blunders not in any way as 
an excuse for failure to do our duty, but as an 
additional incentive to devoting every ounce of 
strength we have to winning the war. If we had 
prepared in advance the war would have been 


1004 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Oct. 


over ninety days after we entered it. If the Ad- 
ministration had used with moderate efficiency the 
results of the lavish generosity of Congress our 
armies and the Allied armies would have been 
doing last March what they actually are doing 
now in October. I trust our people will keep 
well in mind, as a lesson concerning the mere 
money cost of unpreparedness, that the enormous 
sums we have had to raise by taxation and by bor- 
rowing are at the very least twice as great as if 
we had begun to prepare in advance, without 
hurry and confusion and without the attendant 
waste and extravagance and profiteering, and with 
the patriotic and businesslike refusal to consider 
politics or anything else except winning the war. 

We should accept no peace not based on the 
unconditional surrender of Germany and her vas- 
sal allies, Austria and Turkey, and upon the free- 
ing of the subject races of Austria and Turkey 
from the yoke of the Austrian, the Magyar and 
the Turk. Therefore, it is inexcusable in us, and 
is a reflection upon our good faith, to have re- 
mained so long without declaring war on Turkey, 
for it is mere hypocrisy to talk of making the 
world safe for democracy so long as we are not 
at war with Turkey and have not insisted upon 
putting the Turk out of Europe and freeing the 
Armenian and the Syrians of all creeds from his 
‘yoke and giving Palestine to be made a Jewish 
state. 

I would not subject the German or the Magyar 
to the dominion of any one else. But neither 
would I permit them to lord it over any one else. 
The true way to put a stop to Germany’s ability 
again to convulse the world by an effort to secure 
world dominion is to give, not autonomy, but free- 


1918] WILSON AND LINCOLN COMPARED 1005 


dom to all the nations that now cower under the 
tyranny of Germany and her allies. Belgium, of 
course, must be restored and amply indemnified ; 
and all the gold that Germany has cannot repay 
Belgium the frightful wrongs so wantonly com- 
mitted against her by Germany during the last 
four years. France must receive back Alsace and 
Lorraine, and Germany be forced to carry out 
her broken promise to the Danes of North Schles- 
wig. All of Poland must be a separate common- 
wealth with a seafront on the Baltic; Finland, 
the Baltic provinces, Lithuania and Ukrainia must 
be made as absolutely independent of Germany 
as of Russia; the Czecho-Slovaks and the Jugo- 
Slavs must be made into independent common- 
wealths; the Roumanians in East Hungary re- 
stored to Roumania ; the Italians of Southwestern 
Austria joined to Italy; the Greeks safeguarded 
in their rights; Constantinople made a free city, 
and all other injustices remedied in so far as it is 
humanly possible to do so. The German stran- 
glehold must be removed from Russia, and we 
should ourselves help Russia so far as she will 
permit us to do so; and we cannot efficiently do 
so unless our government acts with infinitely 
greater wisdom, forethought, insight and resolu- 
tion than it has shown in its handling of the Si- 
berian matters for the last six months. 

Then, when the end of the war is come and we 
have obtained the peace of complete victory, a 
peace obtained by machine guns and not type- 
writers, we shall have to turn to the affairs of 
our own household and undertake the work of re- 
construction with cool intelligence and resolution, 
with firm determination to secure the highest good 
for the average man, and yet with equally firm 


1006 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Oct. 


determination not to be misled by the visionaries 
and fanatics who, under the plea of helping the 
average man, would bring our whole civilization 
to ruin. 
, I believe that in order efficiently to perform 
these different tasks it is absolutely essential to 
recognize the fact that of the parties, as at pres- 
ent constituted and led, it is only the Republican 
party that is a fit instrument for the purpose. 
That is why I come before you to-night to speak 
for the success of the Republican state ticket here 
in New York and for the success of the Republi- 
can Congressional ticket throughout the Union. 

I shall not try to speak at length to you on be- 
half of the state ticket, because those whose spe- 
cial familiarity is with State matters will specially 
address you on the subject. But I ask for sup- 
port of Governor Whitman and all his associates, 
not only because of their record in office, but also 
because this State cannot with wisdom see Tam- 
many Hall extend its grip from New York to 
Albany. It is not necessary to speak of person- 
alities in such a matter. The reforms for which 
Governor Whitman stands are the very reforms 
which Tammany most opposes. The system 
upon which Tammany is based has in the past 
always been applied at the cost of all that is best 
in our social life wherever Tammany has been 
victorious. This system when applied to New 
York City has borne such results that I think all 
fair-minded men will agree with me that it would 
be a veritable calamity to have it applied through- 
out the State. 

I especially ask the women of New York, now 
about to vote for the first time, to think well what 
the enthronement of Tammany in power at Al- 


1918] WILSON AND LINCOLN COMPARED 1007 


bany may mean. As you know, I have been a 
very ardent champion of woman suffrage for the 
State and the nation. I am sure that having 
granted it in New York means that it will speedily 
have to be granted in the nation as a whole. 
Therefore, I earnestly hope that the women of 
New York, the first time they vote, will not give 
New York State to the control of the organization 
which having long mastered completely the Demo- 
cratic party in New York City has now equally 
completely mastered it in New York State, and 
which has stood with lamentable insistency for 
precisely those forms of evil misgovernment 
which are peculiarly offensive to decent woman- 
hood. We havea right to appeal to all good citi- 
zens who are men to be against Tammany, and 
an even stronger right so to appeal to all good 
citizens who are women. 

Now for the national side of the question. I 
ask support for the Republicans, because it is 
time to put an end to that one party rule which 
has so rapidly developed intolerable invasion of 
the rights of free speech and of a free press; and 
because it is time fearlessly to assert the right 
of the Republican party to a life of useful per- 
formance of public duty in the United States. 
The Democratic party, under the lead of the Ad- 
ministration, and taking adroit advantage of the 
great patriotic outburst in support of the war, has, 
under the pretense of the elimination of partyism, 
come dangerously near to creating a condition of 
one-partyism. It has not striven to eliminate 
partisanship ; it has merely striven to destroy the 
Republican party in the interest of the Demo- 
cratic party. 

The Republican party has an honest duty to 


10088 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Oct. 


perform and an honest appeal to make in this 
matter. Party is an instrument that has been de- 
graded and abused; but the degradation and abuse 
consequent upon the existence of two parties can 
never approach in mischievous effect the degrada- 
tion and abuse where the whole power of the gov- 
ernment is devoted to crushing out everything ex- 
cept one party and to making within that party the 
sole test of party loyalty, loyalty not to our nation 
but to the Administration in power. Under the 
cover of an entirely insincere declaration against 
perseverance in partisan politics, the Democratic 
party, under the lead of the Administration, has 
carried partisan politics during the last eighteen 
months to an extreme never before known in this 
country in a time of war, as among loyal uphold- 
ers of the war. 

The effort is constantly made to confuse the 
mind of the average citizen and to cow him into 
supporting the Democratic party by accusations 
of lack of patriotism if he does not do so. This 
is an intolerable outrage. We admit that a party 
is an instrument that can be abused; but we hold 
not only that the Republican party has shown 
itself staunchly patriotic, but that actually, in 
Congress and out of Congress, it has rendered a 
greater percentage of war service to the nation 
during and before this war than has the Demo- 
cratic party. We hold that the Republican party 
must tell its war service to the nation, and that 
it must ask the people to remember that it gave 
the President greater support in every measure 
designed efficiently to wage the war than did the 
party to which he himself belongs and which he 
is striving to keep in power. We hold that the 
Republican party is the only party that as a party 


1918] WILSON AND LINCOLN COMPARED 1009 


has dared to attack the war failures and has stood 
for the duty of criticism of what is wrong, and 
- therefore for the imperative duty of telling the 
truth. 

The Democrats have announced that it is dis- 
loyal to tell the truth. We hold on the contrary 
that the highest proof of loyalty is truth-telling 
when only by telling the truth can we expose and 
remedy shameful failure efficiently to carry on 
the war. We hold that the record of the Re- 
publican party for patriotism in the past eighteen 
months has never before been equalled or ap- 
proached by any party in opposition during a 
great war, and that its record shines by compari- 
son with the record of its party opponents. We 
have the right to assert our patriotism and to 
stand by it and to say —and challenge the sup- 
port of the people when we do say — that we will 
stand by the President and by every other execu- 
tive official so long as he is right, that we will 
stand against him when he is wrong and that we 
show our loyalty to the people in both attitudes. 
We act in letter and spirit according to the words 
of Abraham Lincoln when he said: “ Stand with 
anybody that stands right, stand with him while 
he is right and part with him when he goes wrong. 
In both cases you are right. In both you 
are national and nothing less than national. To 
act otherwise for any reason is to be less than a 
man, less than an American.” 

This means that it is our duty to stand by the 
President when he really represents the American 
people and carries forward the policies demanded 
by the honor and interest of the people, and to 
fearlessly call him to account when he fails to 
stand by the American people. It means that it 


1010 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Oct. 


is not merely the privilege but the duty of the 
American people to support or oppose the Presi- 
dent as a political leader, precisely as the convic- 
tions of the American people incline them to act. 
We Republicans pledge ourselves to stand by the 
President so long as he stands by the American 
people, and to part company with him at any 
point where in our judgment he does not stand 
by the people. This is the people’s government, 
this is the people’s war and the peace that follows 
shall be the people’s peace. 

Such is the essence of our position. As for the 
need of taking it, I ask you to consider the follow- 
ing facts: Advantage has been taken of Liberty 
Loan meetings and meetings of Four-Minute Men 
to. distribute at Liberty bond booths and else- 
where cards with this appeal: “Stand by Wil- 
son over here. Don’t let the elections go against 
the government. Vote with President Wilson 
and for the Democratic ticket.” This is a frank 
appeal to win votes for the Democratic ticket 
by misleading patriotic citizens and making them 
confused between patriotism and partisanship. 

In the recent letters of the President on behalf 
of the election of various Democratic Senators 
and Congressmen he has set forth explicitly what 
he demands. One letter, for instance, runs: 
“ Senator So and So has been conspicuous among 
the Democrats in the Senate for his opposition to 
the Administration. If the voters of his State 
should again choose him I should be obliged to 
accept their action as a condemnation of my ad- 
ministration.” This language is explicit; what is 
demanded is not loyalty to the country, but 
loyalty to the Administration. It is the language 
not of a President appealing, without regard to 


1918] WILSON AND LINCOLN COMPARED ott 


party, to the people for loyalty to the people’s 
cause, but the language of a party leader insisting 
upen the most rigid discipline among all his party 
subordinates in the rank and file of the party, and 
asserting that loyalty to him personally, ard not 
even loyalty to the party and far less loyalty to 
the country, is to be accepted as the final test. 

But on October 14 last — just two weeks ago 
—the President went even further than this, and 
by his utterance cast vivid light on the path which 
our people must tread if in servile spirit they ac- 
cept loyalty to any man as an adequate substitute 
for loyalty to the nation. The President’s words, 
as reported in the press, were: “TI earnestly re- 
quest every patriotic American to leave to the 
governments of the United States and of the 
Allies the momentous discussions initiated by Ger- 
many, and to remember that for each man his 
duty is to strengthen the hands of these govern- 
ments, and to do it in the most important way 
now immediately presented — by subscribing to 
the utmost of his ability for bonds of the fourth 
Liberty Loan.” 

I have often found it difficult to understand the 
meaning of the President’s statements, but there 
is no difficulty in understanding the meaning of 
this statement. It is the straightforward expres- 
sion of the President’s view that the ordinary 
man, Democrat, or Republican, or independent, is 
to contribute all the money that the government 
needs, but that there his function stops, and that 
he is to have no voice in deciding the policy the 
government can carry out only because he con- 
tributes the money. There is a popular expres- 
sion which runs “ Put up or shut up,” but this 
request to the average citizen is that he shall 


1oi2 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Oct. 


both put up and shut up. The declaration is so 
extraordinary that it is hard to be believe it ac- 
curate, but it has appeared without comment in 
the public press as a quotation from President 
Wilson’s speech, and I have seen no contradiction. 
I ask you men and women, I ask all good citi- 
zens, and I ask Democrats just exactly as much as 
I ask Republicans or independents, to think what 
it means if we in the first place abolish all parties 
except one; if we then make full membership in 
that one party depend not upon loyalty to the 
country, or even loyalty to the party’s principles, 
but loyalty to and support of the Administration ; 
and if finally we accept the view that members 
of other parties and of all parties who subscribe 
the money necessary to run the government are 
to be told that their function is to be limited to 
giving up the money, that they are to have no 
say-so in the governmental policy, and are not 
even to discuss what the government is doing. 
This has a direct bearing upon what has hap- 
pened within the last two weeks. The events in 
connection with the peace negotiations or inter- 
change of notes between the President and the 
Central governments illustrate just what I mean. 
The President’s first note to Germany, about two 
weeks ago, delivered him into the hands of Ger- 
many by his compromising inquiries. It was ac- 
cepted by the Allies and accepted by our own 
people as meaning that if Germany answered as 
she actually did answer he was bound by the im- 
plications of the questions he had asked. There 
was in this country a very extraordinary outburst 
of indignation and protest and a demand for the 
peace of unconditional surrender. Senators 
Lodge and Poindexter and a number of other 


1918] WILSON AND LINCOLN COMPARED 1013 


Senators, including one or two high-minded inde- 
pendent Democrats, but in the great majority of 
instances Republicans, introduced resolutions or 
took other action emphatically repudiating the im- 
plications of the President’s inquiries and de- 
manding unconditional surrender by Germany. 
Our Allies were as profoundly disturbed as our 
own people, and their clear understanding of the 
situation is shown by a special cable from Paris 
contained in the Democratic New York Times 
of October 9, which says: “ The reports of the 
debates in the American Senate share first pages 
with the news of the great military victories on 
the Western front. Senators McCumber, Nelson 
and Lodge are as highly thought of in France to- 
day as are the American generals.” 

The feeling was so strong that President Wil- 
son speedily grew to realize it. Germany an- 
swered him by an acceptance of his terms, phrased 
in the very words he had used. There remained 
for him then only two courses of action. He was 
compelled either to fulfill the plain obligation of 
his note by entering into negotiations with Kaiser- 
ism, which meant the sacrifice of America and 
humanity, and which would have also certainly 
meant the repudiation of his action by the Amer- 
ican people, or else he was himself obliged to re- 
spond in such fashion as to stultify his own di- 
plomacy and repudiate his own implied offer. I 
am thankful that he chose the latter course; he 
served our people and humanity by so doing; but 
it was a service rendered only because he had 
received the sternest warning, by the voice of the 
nation, that this people would ratify no compro- 
mise and would tolerate no such parley as that 
upon which he had entered; and inasmuch as he 


1014 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Oct. 


was the spokesman for the nation, it was not a 
pleasant thing for Americans that he should have 
put himself, and the nation behind him, in the 
position of inviting a proposition which when ac- 
cepted he repudiated. For the very reason that 
I abhor Germany’s trickery, treachery and bad 
faith, I am most anxious that Americans shall 
not imitate her in these matters. And now, in the 
light of the latest developments, we are again 
utterly at sea as to what position he will ulti- 
mately take. 

In the face of these facts, The New York 
W orld, which shares with Mr. Hearst’s papers the 
credit of being the special organ of the national 
administration, demands a Democratic victory 
this year so as to stand by the President on the 
alleged ground that our allies and Germany would 
misinterpret the election of a Republican House as 
being a repudiation of the war aims of this coun- 
try. Such a statement is the veriest nonsense 
that even partisanship can conceive. The quota- 
tion I have given above from The New York 
Times shows that the French people absolutely 
understand that the Republican leaders are the 
statesmen on this side of the water who are most 
uncompromisingly bent on the complete over- 
throw of Germany and bent on securing a peace 
which shall guarantee to all nations, great and 
small, so long as they are well behaved, the com- 
plete liberty from foreign invasion and from in- 
terference with their domestic concerns which we 
demand for ourselves. The triumph of the party 
that has been led during the last eighteen months, 
and especially during the last fortnight, by such 
leaders as Messrs. Lodge, Poindexter, Nelson, 
Johnson and their associates will be accepted 


1918] WILSON AND LINCOLN COMPARED 1015 


everywhere as the triumph of the war spirit of 
America and of our purpose to insist upon the 
peace of victory for justice and right and popular 
freedom. There have been highminded and hon- 
orable Democrats who have not feared to tell the 
exact truth about our failures and blunders and to 
insist on speeding up the war. But the great bulk 
of the action thus indispensably necessary has 
been furnished by the Republicans, and the great 
bulk of the Democrats have tended to sink more 
and more into the position of mere rubber stamps 
for the administration. 

Democratic Senator Lewis, of Illinois, has 
actually introduced a resolution pledging Con- 
gress to abdicate its allegiance to the people and 
to substitute therefor a frankly rubber stamp at- 
titude of cringing acquiescence in any reversal of 
policy by the Administration. What we now 
need is an American Congress, a Congress of 
straight-out Americans, and not a Congress of 
rubber stamps. 

It is necessary to make the world safe for de- 
mocracy, and we cannot do it unless we make this 
nation safe for truth. Truth telling, both where 
the Administration is right and where it is wrong, 
is imperatively demanded. Criticism is impera- 
tively demanded. Nine times out of ten this 
Administration has never led the people. The 
leadership has been furnished by others, and 
the Administration has been reluctantly forced 
forward into action by criticism against which it 
has violently protested. Even when it has fol- 
lowed this leadership it has sullenly and some- 
times maliciously sought to punish the men who 
by their truth telling have forced it into action. 
It was such truth telling that forced the Adminis- 


1016 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Oct. 


tration reluctantly into the war; it was such truth 
telling that forced the Administration to send our 
army abroad; it was such truth telling which 
forced reasonable efficiency in the War Depart- 
ment; it was such truth telling which has forced 
the speeding-up of the ship program, the aircraft 
program and all the other programs which have 
been so lamentably delayed. 

The patriotic zeal of the people was taken ad- 
vantage of to secure legislation for the purpose 
of dealing with the work of German spies and 
with seditious conduct in our own country. The 
laws thus enacted, however, have been used far 
less for their legitimate purpose than to discour- 
age and penalize any truth-telling by newspapers 
or by private individuals about the Administra- 
tion. Never before, in any war, has there been 
such interference with freedom of the press and 
freedom of speech as in this war. The whole 
weight of effort has been not against seditious 
action but against that legitimate criticism of pub- 
lic measures and public servants which is abso- 
lutely indispensable if any country is to remain 
free in fact as well as in name. According to a 
former chief of the Secret Service, there are a 
quarter of a million German spies in this country, 
and a Democratic Senator, Mr. Overman, is re- 
ported as making the figures even larger. Only 
an infinitesimal number of these men have been 
really punished. But the loyal press has been 
bullied and cowed as never before. ‘The test in- 
sisted upon has been not loyalty to our allies and 
hostility to Germany, but adherence to the Ad- 
ministration. It is utterly impossible to account 
on any other ground for the immunity granted the 
so-called Hearst papers, when compared with the 


1918] WILSON AND LINCOLN COMPARED 1017 


extreme severity with which many other papers 
were treated for conduct which amounted to noth- 
ing whatever but entirely legitimate criticism of 
wrong action or of failure to act properly by the 
Administration. 

I know personally, from conversation after con- 
versation with editors of dailies, weeklies and 
monthlies, of the apprehension felt by the best 
papers in the land of telling the truth lest they be 
crippled financially by some act of the Administra- 
tion. Take what was done by the Administration 
in suppressing the report of the airplane scandal. 
This was a report by a committee of the United 
States Senate, made by Democrats and Republi- 
cans alike. It was printed in Canadian and other 
outside papers, so that our allies and our enemies 
were certain to know every fact it contained; yet, 
on the plea of restraining daily papers and maga- 
zines from giving information to the enemy, tens 
of thousands of copies— probably many hun- 
dreds of thousands of copies — were seized and 
deleted or withdrawn from circulation and great 
financial loss and trouble thereby caused many 
reputable papers. Within a fortnight I have been 
told by two editors that they were afraid to 
publish any further comments on the airplane 
scandal at all lest the government should take 
further action against them. 

Our enemies know all about it, our allies know 
all about it; the only people kept in ignorance are 
the people of the United States. I hope to see a 
Republican Congress elected, because such a Con- 
gress will insist upon the most vigorous prosecu- 
tion of the war and upon the complete overthrow 
of Germany and an absolutely satisfactory peace; 
and because it will also insist that the laws meant 


1018 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Oct. 


to punish German spies and to put a stop to sedi- 
tion be effectively used for that purpose, and not 
used to subvert the freedom of the press and the 
freedom of speech in the United States and the 
perpetuation in power of a group of politicians. 
Remember that the terms of peace are not to 
be settled by the President alone, but by the Presi- 
dent acting in conjunction with two-thirds of the 
Senate. Both the President and the Senate must 
be responsible to the American people. The plat- 
form adopted by the Republicans of Kansas offers 
a model of what the Republican position should 
be at this time because of its straightforward 
truthfulness and broad Americanism. It begins 
by demanding the absolute crushing of the Prus- 
sian military power. It insists that there shall be 
no peace without victory. It declares against all 
sectionalism, and states that war profiteering 
should be treated as treason. Itcontinues: “In 
this crisis there is no room for narrow partisan- 
ship. This is no one-party war. It is an Ameri- 
can war, and we denounce all attempts to make 
the support of Democratic candidates a test of 
loyalty. The best statesmanship and business 
ability, regardless of party, should be utilized. 
There is no place for desk soldier favoritisms, for 
shielding of graft or incompetence. ‘There is no 
place for mere faultfinding, but there is a vital 
need for criticism, fair and constructive. 
“The Democratic slogan of 1916, ‘ Kept us out 
of war,’ is now known to every intelligent person 
to have been political camouflage. Vital informa- 
tion was withheld from the public to make the 
slogan effective. Ambassador Gerard’s disclo- 
sures and other evidences of Prussian intrigue and 
insolence, subsequently given to the public, show 


1918] WILSON AND LINCOLN COMPARED 1019 


the true facts of our relations with Germany as 
far back as the sinking of the Lusitania. This 
concealment of facts showing the fixed and sinis- 
ter purposes of Germany and the failure for more 
than two years to make adequate preparation im- 
measurably increases the price in blood and money 
we must now pay for victory.” This is the sound 
doctrine to which all good Americans should sub- 
scribe. 

When it comes to the peace negotiations we 
should emphatically repudiate the famous four- 
teen points announced by the President last Jan- 
uary. One of them he has himself repudiated, 
but the remainder are either so mischievous that 
they ought to be repudiated without further defi- 
nition or else we should insist upon having them 
defined in order to know just exactly what they 
mean. They have been greeted with enthusiasm 
by Germany and by all the pro-Germans on this 
side of the water, especially by the Germanized 
Socialists and by the Bolshevists of every grade; 
and for this reason good Americans should regard 
them with suspicion. For example, the statement 
about the freedom of the seas may be interpreted 
as meaning what Germany contends, and if so no 
patriotic American can support it. The first need 
in freeing the seas is to free them from the Ger- 
man practice of murder of innocent women and 
children. 

Again, we ought to know just what the Presi- 
dent means when he speaks of breaking down eco- 
nomic barriers. If he means that he proposes to 
allow Germany to dump her manufactures on 
us without restriction we ought to be against it, 
and neither business man nor workingman can 
afford to accept it. We ought to insist on keep- 


10200 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Oct. 


ing in our hands the complete right to handle 
our tariff as the vital interests of our own citi- 
zens and especially our own workingmen demand. 
If these two points mean anything they mean that 
the seas are to be free for our enemies’ use in 
time of war and our home markets free for our 
enemies’ trade in time of peace. 

Again, if the President’s language means any- 
thing, one of these fourteen points is a proposal 
to guarantee that every nation shall reduce its 
armament to a point sufficient to preserve do- 
mestic order. If this language is to be taken 
according to its necessary meaning, America 
would be obliged to scrap its navy and reduce 
its army to a police force capable only of putting 
down riot, and would have to trust to a league 
of nations for protecting it against outside ag- 
gression. Either the President’s language means 
this or it means nothing. But if it means this, 
every highminded and farsighted patriotic Ameri- 
can citizen should be against the proposal. Ac- 
cording to what is contained in the President’s 
fourteen points, under this proposal Germany, 
Austria, Turkey and Russia would, as part of the 
league of nations, have the say-so as to America’s 
future, and America would have nothing but a 
small police force with which to protect its own 
rights. 

It is hard for me to speak patiently of such a 
proposition. If it were made by any one except 
the President it would be considered as foolish as 
the wildest folly uttered by. the professional 
pacifists prior to the occurrence of this great war. 
The conduct of the powers above named shows 
that whenever it was to their interest they would 
treat any agreement they made with us as a scrap 


1918] WILSON AND LINCOLN COMPARED 1021 


of paper. The simple fact is that no league of 
nations or any other scheme of the kind should 
be accepted as anything but an addition to, and 
never as a substitute for, the development for 
our own defense of our own strength and its 
preparedness in advance. Internationalism is a 
curse if it is sought to make it as a substitute 
for nationalism. We have to be good Americans 
first before we can be good citizens of the world; 
we must behave justly to all other nations, but 
Wwe must remember in the first place our duty 
to our own wives and children and to the genera- 
tions that are to come after us in this fair and 
mighty land. There are plenty of questions, 
such as our territorial integrity, our right to 
control immigration, our right to establish our 
own tariff policy and the like, which I trust we 
will never surrender to the safe-keeping of any 
league of other nations. 

Remember one or two obvious facts, my 
friends. Remember that in Asia there are about 
ten times as many people as there are in the 
United States. If the league of nations means 
anything, and if internationalism is substituted 
for nationalism, this means that the Asiatics in 
such a league would have ten votes for every 
American vote, and that they would have the 
right to decide such questions as the admissoin 
of unchecked Asiatic immigration to the United 
States and of the refusal to permit us to build 
up any barriers for the keeping up of the standard 
of living of our people and our distinctive Ameri- 
can nationality and American social and industrial 
life. Whoever advocates the submerging of na- 
tionality in internationalism is either hypocritical 
or else he advocates just precisely and exactly 


1022 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Oct. 


what I have outlined. With all my heart and 
soul I adjure our people not to be fooled by fine 
phrases and glittering generalities, but to insist 
on facing facts as they actually are. If they do 
so they will put nationalism in the first place and 
accept our duty to prepare our own strength for 
our own self-defense as our prime duty. Then, 
as an addition to, but never as a substitute for, 
the performance of these duties, they will join in 
any international agreement that promises only 
what can and ought to be performed and that in 
good faith seeks to secure international fair- 
dealing on a basis of justice and right and of 
scrupulous respect for all nations, big or little, 
which are well behaved and do not wrong others 
and which preserve at least a reasonable measure 
of orderly freedom within their own bounds. 
But we can help the world at large only if we 
stand by our own people first. More than two 
thousand years have passed since it was written: 
“He who fails to provide for his own, they of 
his own household, hath denied the faith and is 
worse than an infidel.” 

But the task of the next Congress will be to 
deal not only with war and peace and interna- 
tional relations; it will also have to deal with 
the vital work of the reconstruction of our in- 
-dustrial system at home. At the present moment 
it is our duty to speed up production to the limit. 
This means that there must be some interference 
with the private rights of individuals. Such in- 
terference must be equitable. The farmer must 
not have the price of his products cut down when 
the price of what he gets is not cut down and 
when other products of farmers in other sections 
are left without price fixing at all. There must 


1918] WILSON AND LINCOLN COMPARED 1023 


be no war profiteering, but there must be a legiti- 
mate reward for the money invested and the risk 
taken, or the great work necessary to be done will 
not be done. When this legitimate reward is 
passed the heaviest kind of progressive taxation 
on the surplus should be enforced. The working- 
men should receive the highest wages possible, 
and their housing and living conditions in all 
plants doing government work should be care- 
fully safeguarded. But when this has been done 
it should be understood that our motto is “ work 
or fight,” that slackers will be at once sent into 
the army and to the front, and that every man is 
expected to do a full day’s work every day and 
a full week’s work every week, and that we per- 
mit no limitation of output whatever, whether 
under the pretext of obeying a union rule or 
from sheer loafing. 

When the war is over we should begin to re- 
shape our economic policy on the basis of en- 
deavoring to secure a general raise of the table- 
land of reward for ordinary effort, without re- 
ducing the peaks of exceptional reward for excep- 
tional achievement. We must insist both on 
the need of practically recognizing the spirit of 
brotherhood and also of recognizing in full and 
generous fashion the necessity of leadership and 
of an ungrudging, although never an excessive, 
reward for such leadership. Capital should have 
the right to combine, for combination is essential 
to the efficient and economic handling of much 
business ; but because of the power it confers such 
combination should always be strictly controlled 
and regulated by the government. 

Our aim shou!d be to encourage business ef- 
ficiency by guaranteeing it an ample reward, 


1024 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  {[Oct. 


but also to supervise it in such fashion as to 
insure its usefulness to the community, and to 
prevent the reward from becoming excessive 
and disproportionate to the service rendered. 
Service should be the true test and the reward 
should so far as possible be proportionate to the 
service. In a very true sense our effort should 
be steadily and cautiously to give labor a certain 
right of ownership and control in the business in 
which it is associated with capital, and inasmuch 
as this right cannot be wisely given nor main- 
tained at all unless labor intelligently recognizes 
its duties and the rights of capital, we must in- 
sist that labor, no less than capital, never forgets 
that the enjoyment of right should be conditioned 
upon the performance of duty and that the en- 
joyment of one’s own rights must always be ac- 
companied by the fullest recognition of the rights 
of others. 

Labor has the same right to collective action, 
including collective bargaining, that capital has. 
We should insist upon the guaranteeing of the 
safety of each right, and we should furthermore 
insist that neither right be abused and that the 
government act fearlessly when either is abused. 
We should guarantee to the hard-working man 
who toils with his hands the right to safety and 
comfort while working and during his old age, 
and therefore we should insist upon proper forms 
of old age insurance and insurance against acci- 
dent, disease and unemployment, and no business 
should receive any favors unless the living and 
working conditions of labor are properly cared 
for. We must steer equally clear of the deaden- 
ing paralysis of state socialism and of the lawless 


1918] WILSON AND LINCOLN COMPARED 1025 


anarchy of unregulated individualism. We are 
equally against Bourbonism and Bolshevism. 

The foundation of our permanent civilization 
rests on the farmer, and by farmer I mean not 
the man who owns lands which others till, but 
the man who himself tills or helps till the ground, 
part of which at least he himself owns. He is 
the man who raises our food in peace and does 
his full share of fighting our battles in war. A 
cardinal feature of our national policy should 
be the insuring of his rights to this man; and 
this not only for his sake, but for the sake of 
all of us, for his welfare is fundamental to the 
welfare of all of us. Normally he must be the 
owner of the ground he and his sons and his 
hired man till ; and the hired man must have con- 
ditions shaped so that if he is hard working, 
thrifty and energetic he shall have the means and 
the opportunity himself to purchase farming land 
on which to dwell and to bring up his family. 
Nation and state must combine te secure this. 

Normally, in farming regions, where the land 
is agricultural land, tenancy should be recognized 
only as a transitional and temporary phase, and 
normally the working farmer should himself be 
the land owner, and legislation to secure this 
should at once be enacted. Of course, I recog- 
nize fully that the needs are widely different in 
different sections, and must be met in different 
ways. 

Drastic action should be taken to stop the pur- 
chase of agricultural land for speculative pur- 
poses. Systems of marketing must be developed, 
partly by governmental action, partly by organ- 
ized action among the farmers themselves, so as 


1020 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Oct. 


to do away with the holdup methods that in so 
many places still obtain. The producer must 
get more and the consumer pay less than at pres- 
ent, and both these ends can be, and have been, 
attained by proper legislation. 

We ought to do these and the many other 
things necessary now, when it is possible to do 
them without causing too great distress to those 
in possession of long undisputed privileges which 
by time have grown to possess much of the char- 
acter of rights. Nine-tenths of wisdom is being 
wise in time. In this country tenant farming and 
the individual ownership of enormous tracts of 
agricultural land are growing at the expense of 
the homestead holders. 

Let us take whatever steps — conservative, if 
possible; radical, if necessary —are needed to 
remedy the situation; for if left unremedied the 
result may be something unpleasantly near revo- 
lution a half century hence; and in such case the 
wrongs will be remedied only by action which 
causes other wrongs to innocent people and works 
deep demoralization to those benefited ; whereas, 
at present, by the exercise of forethought and 
resolution, we may escape both kinds of evil. 

There are certain things the state can do and 
must do for the farmer. But most things the 
farmer can do for himself by association with his 
fellow farmers, and such independence of un- 
necessary state action is healthy in itself and is 
consonant with the rugged self-reliance char- 
acteristic of that most typical of American citizens 
the American who dwells in the open country 
and tills the soil with his own hands. 

Finally, we should make it our prime duty, 
coming ahead of all other duties, to care for the 


1918] WILSON AND LINCOLN COMPARED 1027 


soldier, and the wife and children of the soldier, 
who has served his country in this war. We 
should shape our whole policy so as to give him 
when he returns the opportunity to get back into 
the industrial system in improved position. I do 
not mean to coddle him or excuse him from work, 
whether he be wounded or unwounded, for no 
man is helped by being coddled or excused from 
work. The law of worthy life is the law of 
worthy work! I mean to treat him as the man 
whom we most delight to honor and whose self- 
respect we guard as jealously as we guard our 
own. We should take all the steps necessary to 
give full opportunity to go on the land to all 
soldiers who are willing to go on the land, and 
we should guarantee them the opportunity, on 
reasonable terms, to get the land and to work and 
live on it. If the soldier turns to other forms of 
labor or business, his opportunity should be made 
as open as possible and his rights guarded with a 
jealousy which we extend to no other citizen of 
our commonwealth. 

The American army overseas, and the officers 
and enlisted men of the navy, and the officers 
and enlisted men of our army here who eagerly 
desire to go abroad, have put us all under an 
immeasurable debt; they are the Americans who 
more than any others we delight to honor, and we 
must make our honoring them as a matter of ac- 
tual fact and not of empty phrase. 


1028 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Nov. 


THE AMERICAN NEGRO AND THE WAR 


REMARKS MADE AT A MEETING HELD UNDER THE 
AUSPICES OF THE CIRCLE FOR NEGRO WAR RE- 
LIEF, AT CARNEGIE HALL, NEW YORK, ON NO- 
VEMBER 2, 1918. 


At this time I would not willingly speak for 
any cause not connected with our direct and im- 
mediate duty of winning the war and caring for 
those who are to win the war. (Applause.) I 
take peculiar pleasure in coming to speak for the 
Circle for Negro War Relief. And now if any 
of you haven’t given, turn in a pledge card, and 
if any one is likely to forget the admirable adjura- 
tion at the end of one line of the song before 
the last, be sure that you pay what you pledge! 

I wish to mention that when it became my 
duty to divide the Nobel Peace Prize among our 
war activities I gave an equal share to the work 
being done by Negro women for war relief (Ap- 
plause) with the shares I had given to such or- 
ganizations as the Y. M. C. A., the Knights of 
Columbus, and the Salvation Army, and in doing 
it I tried to follow out the counsel so wisely 
_given by one of our speakers this evening, to 
remember that the Negro has a right to sit at the 
council board where questions vitally affecting 
him are considered — and at the same time that 
as a matter of expediency it is well to have white 
men at the board too. (Laughter and applause.) 
And I say that though I know there are many 
colored men — Mr. Scott is one and the Chair- 
man is another — whom I would be delighted to 
have sit at the council board where only the af- 


1918] THE NEGRO AND THE WAR 1029 


fairs of white men are concerned. As things 
are now, the wisest course to follow is that fol- 
lowed in the organization of this Circle. And so 
when I gave the $4,100 from the Nobel Peace 
Prize I mentioned two women, one white and 
one colored, as the ones whose advice I wished 
to have followed in the actual disposition of the 
fund. Now, I only mention this to show that I 
tried by works to show the faith that is in me. 
And I want you to do the same with the pledge 
cards! 

I wish to congratulate you on the dignity and 
self-restraint with which the appeal of the Circle 
is issued. You have put what I would like to say 
better than I could have put it, when you say 
that you would like the men at the front and in 
the camps to know that there is a distinctively 
colored organization working for them. The 
people at home ought to know that this organiza- 
tion, though started and maintained with friendly 
cooperation from white friends, is intended to 
prove to the world that the colored people them- 
selves can manage war relief in an efficient, hon- 
est and dignified way, and so bring honor to their 
race. (Applause.) Every organization like the 
Circle for Negro War Relief is doing its part in 
bringing about the right solution for the great 
problem which the chairman has spoken of this 
evening. I do not for one moment wish to be 
understood as excusing the white man from his 
full responsibility for what he has done to keep 
the black man down; but I do wish to say with 
all the emphasis and all the earnestness at my 
command that the greatest work the colored man 
can do to help his race upward is by his own per- 
son, and through codperation with his fellows, 


1030 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Nov., 


showing the dignity of service by the colored man 
and colored woman for all our people. (Ap- 
plause. ) 

Let me illustrate by an example suggested to 
me by one name I see both on your list of vice- 
presidents and on your list of directors, to show 
just what I mean when I say the advisability of 
white cooperation and the occasional advisability 
of doing without white cooperation. Had I been 
permitted to raise troops to go to the other side in 
what will soon be the “ late war,” I should have 
asked permission to raise two colored regiments. 
It is perfectly possible of course that there is 
more than one colored man in the country fit for 
the extraordinarily difficult task of commanding 
one such regiment which would contain nothing 
but colored officers. But it happened that I only 
knew of one, and that was Colonel Charles Young. 
(Applause.) I had intended, and Colonel Young 
had been so notified, to offer him the colonelship 
of one regiment, telling him that I expected him 
to choose only colored officers and that, while I 
was sure he would understand the extreme diffi- 
culty and extreme responsibility of his task, I 
intended to try to impress it upon him still more; 
to tell him that under those conditions I put a 
heavier responsibility upon him than upon any 
other colored man in the country ; that he was to 
be given an absolutely free hand in choosing his 
officers ; and that on the other hand he would have 
to treat them absolutely mercilessly if they didn’t 
come right up to the highest level. On the other 
hand, with the other colored regiment I should 
have had a colonel and a lieutenant-colonel and 
three majors who would have been white men. 
One of them, Hamilton Fish, is over there now. 


1918] THE NEGRO AND THE WAR 1031 


He was offered promotion in another regiment; 
but he said no, he would stay with his sun-burned 
Yankees. (Laughter andapplause.) He stayed 
accordingly. 

Mr. Cobb has spoken to you as an eyewitness of 
what has been done by the colored troops across 
the seas. I am well prepared to believe it. In 
the very small war in which I served, which was 
a kind of pink tea affair compared to this, I was 
in a division, a small dismounted cavalry division, 
where in addition to my own regiment we had 
three white regular regiments and two colored 
regiments ; and when we had gotten through the 
campaign my own men, who were probably two- 
thirds southerners and southwesterners, used to 
say “The Ninth and Tenth Cavalry are good 
enough to drink out of our canteens.” (Laugh- 
ter and applause. ) 

Terrible though this war has been, I think it 
has been also fraught with the greatest good for 
our national soul. We went to war, as Mr. 
Cobb has said, to maintain our own national self- 
respect. And, friends, it would have been dread- 
ful if we hadn’t gone in. Materially, because the 
fight was so even that I don’t think it is boasting, 
I think it is a plain statement of fact, Mr. Cobb, 
that our going in turned the scale. Isn’t that so? 
(Applause.) I think the Germans and their vassal 
allies would have been victorious if we hadn’t 
gone in. And if they had been victorious and 
we had stayed out — soft, flabby, wealthy — they 
would have eaten us without saying grace. 
(Laughter and applause.) Well, thank Heaven! 
Wwe went in, and our men on the other side, our 
sons and brothers on the other side, white men 
and black, white soldiers and colored soldiers, 


1032 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Nov. 


have done such admirable work that every Ameri- 
can can now walk with his head up and look the 
citizen of any other country in the world straight 
in the eyes. (Applause.) We have the satisfac- 
tion of knowing that we have played the decisive 
part. I am not saying this in any spirit of self- 
flattery. If any of you have heard me speak 
during the preceding four years, you know that 
I have not addressed the American people in a 
vein of undiluted eulogy. But without self-flat- 
tery we can say that it was our going in that 
turned the scale for freedom and against the 
most dangerous tyranny that the world has ever 
seen. We acted as genuine friends of liberty in 
so doing. 

Now, after the war, friends, I think all of us 
in this country, white and black alike, have also 
got to set an example to the rest of the world in 
steering a straight course equally distant from 
kaiserism and bolshevism. (Applause.) 

And, friends, I wish as an American to thank 
you, and as your fellow-American to congratu- 
late you, upon the honor won and the services 
rendered by the colored troops on the other side; 
by the men, such as the soldier we have with us 
to-night who won the cross of war, the French 
war cross for gallantry in action; by the many 
others like him who acted with equal gallantry 
and who for one reason or another never at- 
tracted the attention of their superiors, and, well 
though they did, did not receive the outward and 
visible token to prove what they had done. I 
congratulate you on what all those men have 
done. I congratulate you on what the colored 
nurses at home have done and have been ready 
to do (Applause), and I express my very sin- 


1918] THE NEGRO AND THE WAR 1033 


cere regret that some way was not found to put 
them on the other side at the front. I congratu- 
late you upon it in the name of our country, and 
above all in the name of the colored people of 
our country. For in the end services of this kind 
have a cumulative effect in winning the confidence 
and the respect of your fellows of another color. 
And I hope —and I wish to use a stronger ex- 
pression than “ hope”; I expect — and I am go- 
ing to do whatever small amount I can to bring 
about the realization of the expectation —I ex- 
pect that as a result of this great war, intended 
to secure a greater justice internationally among 
the peoples of mankind, we shall apply at home 
the lessons that we have been learning and help- 
ing teach abroad (Applause) ; that we shall work 
sanely, not foolishly, but resolutely, toward se- 
curing a juster and fairer treatment in this coun- 
try of colored people, basing that treatment 
upon the only safe rule to be followed in Ameri- 
can life, of treating each individual accordingly 
as his conduct or her conduct requires you to 
treat them. (Applause.) 

I don’t ask for any man that he shall, because 
of his race, be given any privilege. All I ask is 
that in his ordinary civil and political rights, in 
his right to work, to enjoy life and liberty and 
the pursuit of happiness, that as regards these 
rights he be given the same treatment that we 
would give him if he was an equally good man 
of another color. (Applause.) 

Now, friends, both the white and the black 
man in moments of exultation are apt to think 
that the millennium is pretty near ; that the “ sweet 
chariot” has swung so low that everybody can 
get upon it atonce. I don’t think that my colored 


1034 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Nov. 


fellow-citizens are a bit worse than my white 
fellow-citizens as regards that particular aspira- 
tion! But mine is the ungrateful task of warn- 
ing both that they must not expect too much. 
They must have their eyes on the stars but their 
feet on the ground. I have to warn my white 
fellow-citizens on this point when they say ‘‘ Well 
now, at the end of this war we are going to have 
universal peace, and everybody will always here- 
after love everybody else!” I wish you to re- 
member that the strongest professional exponents 
of international love in public life to-day are 
Lenine and Trotsky; and when these professed 
internationalists got control of Russia they ruined 
Russia and betrayed the liberty-loving nations of 
mankind. I wish to help forward the cause of 
internationalism; and for that very reason I de- 
cline to indulge in dreams that might turn to 
nightmares. Now, in the same way, I will do 
everything I can to aid, to help bring about, to 
bring nearer, the day when justice, the square- 
deal, will be given as between black man and 
white. (Applause.) And yet I want to warn you 
that that is only going to come gradually; that 
there will be very much injustice; injustice that 
must not overmuch disappoint you; that must not 
cow you; and, above all, must not make you feel 
sullen and hopeless. And one thing I wish to 
say, not to you here, but to the colored men who 
live where the bulk of colored men do, in the 
south: always remember the lesson which I 
learned from Booker Washington: that in the 
long run the white man who can give most help 
to the colored man is the white man who lives 
next to him. And in consequence I have always 
felt it my duty, in or out of office, and I have 


1918] THE NEGRO AND THE WAR 1035 


always tried — not always successfully, but I al- 
ways tried —to work so that I could command 
the assistance and respect of the bulk of the white 
men who are decent and square, in what I at- 
tempted to do for the colored man who is decent 
and square. I say I did not always succeed. 
Sometimes I had most intricate rows with one 
side, and sometimes with the other — there were 
moments when I thought I had committed both 
in an offensive alliance against myself. 

But at any rate such is the ideal I have had be- 
fore me. It is the ideal all of us must have be- 
fore us: to try never to be content unless we have 
gone forward; never to be content unless we are 
trying to make things better, but always to be 
taking into account just how far it is possible to 
press things forward so as not to invite a re- 
action that would make things worse than they 
were before. It is not an easy task; but it is a 
task that every one of us must set himself to 
perform. The prime thing for the white man to 
remember is that it is his business to treat the 
colored man, and even more the colored woman, 
squarely ; to give him or her not only the proper 
treatment in material things, but also the respect 
to which every decent man or woman is entitled 
asamatter of right. (Applause.) And the prime 
thing for the colored man is to conduct himself 
so that the unjust suspicions of the white may 
not be given any foundation of justice so far 
as his colored neighbor is concerned. To each 
side I preach the doctrine of thinking more of 
its duties than of its rights. I don’t mean that 
you shan’t think of your rights. I want you to 
do so. But it is awfully easy, if you begin to 
dwell all the time on your rights, to find that 


1036 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Nov. 


you suffer from an ingrowing sense of your own 
perfections and wrongs and that you forget what 
you owe to any one else. To the white man I 
never speak of the Negro’s failings at all. When 
I speak to the white man I speak to him about 
his duty to give the colored man a square deal 
in industry, in self-respect, in matters like hous- 
ing, in everything of the kind, and just so far as 
possible to aid him to preserve, as is said here 
“his dignity so that he shall live and work in an 
efficient, honest and dignified way.” In other 
words, so that he or she shall keep and maintain 
his or her self-respect, the most valuable quality 
that any citizen can have. That’s the advice that 
I give to the white man. 

To the colored man I say, “ Stand up for your 
rights of course, but be perfectly certain that 
the right-thinking white man understands what 
your point of view is and that he is given a full 
opportunity to know your rights so that he can 
join you in standing up for them. And set your 
faces like flint against the Negro criminal.” And 
I ask that because of the very fact that too often 
the white man is guilty of the dreadful injustice 
of putting on the whole Negro race the responsi- 
bility for the Negro criminal, as he never dreams 
of doing in the case of the white race and the 
white criminal. But as colored men I wish to 
impress upon you to the limit of my power that 
the colored criminal is peculiarly an enemy of 
the colored race; because of the very fact that the 
white man and white woman who hear of him 
inevitably symbolize him as the race. They ought 
not to do it; but they do! And therefore the 
worst offender against the colored race is the 
colored criminal. He is the man who does more 


1918] ROMANOFF AND BOLSHEVIST 1037 


to keep the Negro down than any white man can 
possibly do. And I ask you colored men to of all 
things hunt down, hunt out, the colored criminal 
of every type. Thereby you will render the 
greatest service to the colored race that can pos- 
sibly be rendered. 

Well, friends, you see I have suffered from my 
usual temptation to drop into a sermon. I didn’t 
intend to preach it. I have come here simply to 
wish you well and to congratulate all colored 
men and women, and all their white fellow- 
Americans upon the gallantry and efficiency with 
which the colored men have behaved at the front, 
and the efficiency and wish to render service 
which has been shown by both the colored men 
and the colored women behind them in this coun- 
try. 


THE ROMANOFF SCYLLA AND THE 
BOLSHEVIST CHARYBDIS 


AN ARTICLE PUBLISHED IN THE METROPOLITAN 
MAGAZINE IN DECEMBER, 1918 


From the days when civilized man first began 
to strive for self-government and democracy suc- 
cess in this effort has depended primarily upon 
the ability to steer clear of extremes. For almost 
its entire length the course lies between Scylla 
and Charybdis; and the heated extremists who 
insist upon avoiding only one gulf of destruction 
invariably land in the other—and then take 
refuge in the meager consolation afforded by de- 
nouncing as “ inconsistent ” the pilot who strives 
to avoid both. Order without liberty and liberty 


1038 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Dec. 


without order are equally destructive; special 
privilege for the few and special privilege for the 
many are alike profoundly anti-social; the fact 
that unlimited individualism is ruinous in no way 
alters the fact that absolute state ownership and 
regimentation spells ruin of a different kind. All 
of this ought to be trite to reasonably intelligent 
people — even if they are professional intellec- 
tuals — but in practice an endless insistence on 
these simple fundamental truths is endlessly nec- 
essary. 

Before our eyes the unfortunate Russian na- 
tion furnishes an example on a gigantic scale of 
what to avoid in oscillating between extremes. 
The autocratic and bureaucratic despotism of 
the Romanoffs combined extreme tyranny with 
extreme inefficiency; and the Bolshevists have 
turned the Revolution into a veritable Witches’ 
Sabbath of anarchy, plunder, murder, utterly 
faithless treachery and inefficiency carried to the 
verge of complete disintegration. Each side 
sought salvation by formulas which were con- 
demned alike by common sense and common mor- 
ality ; and even these formulas were by their ac- 
tions belied. 

I do not say these things from any desire to 
speak ill of the Russian people. I am far too 
conscious of our own smug shortcoming during 
the world war to wish to comment harshly on 
a great people which has suffered terribly and 
which battled bravely for the three years during 
which we as a nation earned the curse of Meroz 
by the complacent and greedy selfishness with 
which we refused to come to the help of the 
Lord against the mighty — while our leaders with 
unctuous hypocrisy justified our course by de- 


1918] ROMANOFF AND BOLSHEVIST _ 1030 


liberate falsehood and by a sham sentimentality 
which under the circumstances was nauseous. 
Our astute profiting by the valor of others saved 
us from paying the terrible penalty which Russia 
has paid; but from the standpoint of national and 
international morality our offense was well nigh 
as rank as Russia’s. Since the Bolshevists rose 
to power Russia has betrayed her own honor, 
and the cause of world democracy, and the liber- 
ties of well-behaved minorities within her own 
borders, and the right to liberty and self-govern- 
ment of small well behaved nations everywhere. 
But for the two years after the Lusitania was 
sunk, we continued to fawn on the blood-stained 
murderers of our people, we were false to our- 
selves and we were false to the cause of right and 
of liberty and democracy throughout the world. 
Had we done our duty when the Lusitania was 
sunk, instead of following the advice of the apos- 
tles of greedy and peaceable infamy, the world 
war with its dreadful slaughter would long ago 
have been over. Incidentally Russia would have 
been saved from the abyss into which she has 
fallen, for in her inevitable revolution the Bol- 
shevists would not have had the German support 
which has enabled them to wrench loose the very 
foundations of their country. No wonder poor 
Kerensky during his brief and perilous moment 
of leadership exclaimed that it was America’s 
turn to do the fighting and endure the loss, for 
the three years’ effort had strained Russia to the 
snapping point. 

Moreover, we can feel genuine sympathy with 
the immense mass of Russian peasants, who have 
never been given the chance to learn self-govern- 
ment or to discriminate between possibilities and 


1040 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Dec. 


impossibilities, and who in their ignorance and 
poverty, their suffering and bewilderment, must 
not be too heavily blamed for behaving as, when 
all is said, a very considerable fraction of our own 
people were anxious to behave. And during the 
last year or eighteen months our own government 
has behaved toward Russia with such shortsight- 
edness and infirmity of purpose, such failure to 
adopt either or any of the possible courses until 
it was too late to get more than a fraction 
of the possible benefit, that it behooves us to be 
very charitable in our estimate of the Russian 
people. We neither back the men like Raymond 
Robbins who desired us to give peaceful aid to 
the Soviet Governments and to attempt to save 
Russia by our economic strength; nor yet did we 
back the Czecho-Slovaks by putting a substantial 
army in Siberia early last spring. We were 
neither wise and generous friends, nor just and 
fearless foes. We never acted until after the 
best time for action had passed. We hit; but 
we hit softly. 

It is absolutely imperative for the sake of this 
nation that we shall realize the lamentable calam- 
ities that have befallen Russia and shall condemn 
in sternest fashion the men in our own country 
who would invite such calamities for America. 
The reactionaries, the men whose only idea is 
to restore their power to the bourbons of wealth 
and politics, and obstinately to oppose all rational 
forward movements for the general betterment, 
would if they had their way bring to this country 
the ruin wrought by the régime of the Romanoffs 
in Russia. To withstand the sane movement for 
social and industrial justice is enormously to in- 
crease the likelihood that the movement will be 


1918] ROMANOFF AND BOLSHEVIST 1041 


turned into insane and sinister channels. And 
to oscillate between the sheer brutal greed of the 
haves and the sheer brutal greed of the have- 
nots means to plumb the depths of degradation. 
The soldiers who in this war have battled at the 
front against autocracy will not submit to the 
enthronement of privilege at home. They believe 
in discipline and leadership, they believe in the 
superior reward going to leaders like General 
Pershing and Admiral Sims; but they believe 
that in time the difference in industrial reward 
between the good man at the top of the manage- 
ment class and the good man in the workingman’s 
class ought roughly to correspond to the differ- 
ence in reward between the General and the 
Sergeant-Major, the Admiral and the Warrant 
Officer. 

We will not submit to privilege in the form of 
wealth. Just as little will we submit to the priv- 
ilege of a mob. There are no worse enemies of 
America than the American Bolshevists and the 
crew of politicians who pander to them. We 
ought therefore clearly to understand what the 
Bolsheviki attempted in Russia and what after a 
year of power they have done for, or rather to, 
Russia. They utterly repudiated the idea of a 
democracy where every man is guaranteed his 
rights and is limited in his power to do wrong. 
Their effort was to create a Marxian socialistic 
state, based on the class conscious purpose of the 
proletariat to destroy and rob every other class. 
They oppressed and plundered impartially all 
former oppressors and wrongdoers and all former 
champions of fair dealing and liberty. They at- 
tacked the erst-while corrupt bureaucrat or 
wealthy land-owner who had neglected all his 


1042 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  {[Dec. 


duties not a whit more venomously than they at- 
tacked the small shopkeeper or skilled mechanic 
or industrious farmer or thrifty workingman who, 
because he had saved money and began to live 
decently, they denounced as having adopted 
“bourgeois standards.” They definitely sought 
to realize the stark formulas of Marxian social- 
ism; and therefore they have made a genuine 
contribution for warning and prevention against 
destructive adventure of a similar character in 
our own land. The followers of Trotsky and 
Lenine, like the followers of Robespierre and 
Marat, have just one lesson to teach the Ameri- 
can people: what to avoid. 

In the peace treaty of last March the Russian 
Bolshevists and the German autocracy joined 
against the free nations. Anarchy and despotism 
joined against liberty. The representatives of 
the privilege of a proletarian mob and the repre- 
sentatives of the privilege of a plutocratic oli- 
garchy struck hands against the men who believe 
in no privilege. Germany suppressed Bolshevism 
and restored military order in the Russian prov- 
inces the Bolshevists ceded to her, and cynically 
supported Bolshevism in the rest of Russia pre- 
cisely because Bolshevism is a cancerous growth; 
Germany recognizes that anarchy destroys free- 
dom; therefore Germany encourages anarchy in 
every land to which she cannot apply her own 
iron despotism; for she wishes to destroy every 
nation that she cannot enslave. The Bolshevist 
leaders — it matters not whether they were sin- 
ister visionaries, or the corrupted agents of Ger- 
many — played Germany’s game in order to gain 
a respite during which they brought still further 
destruction to their own countrymen. They 


i918] ROMANOFF AND BOLSHEVIST 1043 


preached socialism, and practiced anarchy — in 
their extreme forms the two always meet when 
the effort is made actually to apply them. 
Surely this lesson will not be lost on the people 
of the United States, the keen, kindly, brave peo- 
ple, who are often slow to wake but who are far- 
sighted and resolute when once awake. We 
of the United States must set ourselves to the 
task of ordering our own household in the spirit 
of Abraham Lincoln. Therefore we must realize 
that the reactionaries among us are the worst foes 
of order, and the revolutionaries the worst foes 
of liberty ; and unless we can preserve both order 
and liberty the republic is doomed. At the mo- 
ment, the profiteers, and all men who make for- 
tunes out of this war, represent the worst types 
of reactionary privilege; and on a level of evil 
with them stand all the various exponents of 
American Bolshevism. Prominent, although not 
always poweriul, among the latter are the pro- 
fessional intellectuals, who vary from the soft- 
handed, noisily self-assertive frequenters of 
frowsy restaurants to the sissy socialists, the pink 
tea and parlor Bolshevists who support what they 
regard as “ advanced ” papers, and aspire to noto- 
riety as make-believe “reds.” I call these per- 
sons “ intellectuals ” in deference to the terminol- 
ogy of European politics; for they ape the silly 
half-educated people, and the educated able people 
with a moral or mental twist, who in almost 
every European country have found notoriety 
and excitement in fomenting revolutionary move- 
ments which they were utterly powerless to di- 
rect or control. Unless the term intellectual is 
to be construed as excluding either character 
or common sense it can be applied to them only 


1044 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Dec. 


in irony. In our own vernacular they have been 
styled the exponents of Highbrow Hearstism or 
Bolshevism. The sincere and well meaning 
among them come in the class of those described 
by Don Marquis in his account of “ Hermione 
and her little group of serious thinkers.” Those 
in this class usually furnish the funds with which 
their more astute brethren carry on the propa- 
ganda and earn a shifty livelihood. Worthy 
soft-headed persons of both sexes — including 
some who edit magazines or write for them — 
think it smart and uplifting to describe with 
sympathy the Russian exile who wishes to smash 
our government because the “ bourgeoise ”’ who 
love music can purchase reserved seats at a 
musical performance —I suppose they should be 
kept free for the proletariat to sit in ten at a 
time; or to eulogize the red flag leaders of a 
“picnic of socialist locals” whose “ spiritually 
alive” faces inflamed with “ explosive ideas, big 
emotions and winged visions” the particular 
member of Hermione’s group of serious thinkers 
who chronicled them —and who evidently had 
not exercised the infinitesimal amount of thought 
necessary to realize just what these same ex- 
plosive ideas of the red flag gentry were at that 
moment producing in Russia. 

I am referring to two articles chosen almost 
at random in respectable magazines. They rep- 
resent a fad; a fad which is chiefly foolish but 
which may become mischievous. The dilettante 
Reds who gratify their vanity by this fad, play 
into the hands of the genuine Reds, who are not 
dilettantes, and who resort to bomb throwing, 
arson, robbery and murder as a business and not 
as a fad. The leaders of the Germanized so- 


1919] ROMANOFF AND BOLSHEVIST 1045 


cialists of this country are traitors to America 
and to mankind just exactly as are the Bolshevist 
leaders in Russia; and some at least of the leaders 
of the Non-Partisan League stand on the same 
footing. The leaders of the I. W. W. are no 
more victims of social wrong, are no more pro- 
testers against social evil, than are so many pro- 
fessional gun men. There are plenty of honest, 
misled men among the rank and file of all the or- 
ganizations; and plenty of wrongs from which 
these men suffer; but these men can be helped, 
and these wrongs remedied, only if we set our 
faces like flint against the evil leaders who would 
hurl our social organism into just such an abyss 
as that which has engulfed Russia. 

So much for the false friends of liberty. We 
must equally abhor the false friends of order. 
Those who invoke order to prevent the righting 
of wrong are the ultimate friends of disorder. 
Our sternest effort should be exerted against the 
man of wealth and power who gets the wealth 
by harming others and uses the power without 
regard to the general welfare. In the times 
ahead we must avoid equally both hardness of 
heart and softness of head. We must substitute 
the full performance of duty in a brotherly spirit, 
both for the mean and arrogant greed of the haves 
and for the mean and envious greed of the have- 
nots. At present Germany is dangerous as a 
huge man eating beast is dangerous; Russia is 
dangerous as an infected and plague stricken 
body is dangerous. We must guard against both. 
And within our own borders we must steer our 
great free republic as far from the Romanoff 
Scylla as from the Bolshevist Charybdis. 


1046 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [{Jan. 


THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS 


AN ARTICLE PUBLISHED IN THE METROPOLITAN 
MAGAZINE IN JANUARY, IQIQ 


WitTHovtT question there is a general desire for 
some kind of international agreement or union or 
league which will tend to prevent the recur- 
rence, or at least to minimize the scope and the 
horrors of such a hideous disaster to humanity 
as the world war. In common with most of my 
friends I strongly share this feeling; indeed, the 
scheme which still seems to me most likely to 
prove feasible and beneficial in action is that 
which I gave in outline four years ago in the 
little volume called “ America and the World 
War.” In discussing this scheme I emphasized 
the vital need that there should be good faith 
among those entering into the scheme and hon- 
orable conduct in living up to the obligations in- 
curred; for heedless readiness to make promises 
which are unlikely to be fulfilled is a public 
,sin but one degree lower than callous readiness 
to break promises that can be kept. 

In living up to the promises after once the 
league has been formed, the chief need will be 
insistence upon keeping faith when keeping faith 
is unpleasant or irksome. But in forming the 
league the chief danger will come from the 
enthusiastic persons who in their desire to realize 
the millennium at once, right off, play into the 
hands of the slippery politicians who are equally 
ready to make any promise when the time for 
keeping it is far distant, and to evade keeping it 
when the time at last arrives. 


1919] LEAGUE OF NATIONS 1047 


Nothing is easier than to be the kind of sham 
idealist whose idealism consists in uttering on all 
occasions the loftiest sentiments, while never hesi- 
tating to act in direct contravention of them when 
self-interest is dictator; and verily this man has 
his reward, for he is repaid by the homage of 
all the foolish people who care for nothing but 
words, and by the service of all the unscrupulous 
people whose deeds do not square with any words 
which can be publicly uttered, and who seek profit 
by cloaking such action behind over-zealous ad- 
herence to lofty phrases. 

But the idealist who tries to realize his ideals is 
sure to be opposed alike by the foolish people 
who demand the impossible good and by the 
wicked people who under cover of adherence to 
the impossible good oppose the good which is 
possible. 

If the League of Nations is built on a docu- 
ment as high-sounding and as meaningless as the 
speech in which Mr. Wilson laid down his four- 
teen points, it will simply add one more scrap 
to the diplomatic waste paper basket. Most 
of these fourteen points, like those referring to 
the freedom of the seas, to tariff arrangements, 
to the reduction of armaments, to a police force 
for each nation, and to the treatment of colonies, 
could be interpreted (and some of them, by 
President Wilson and his advisers, actually were 
interpreted) to mean anything or nothing. They 
were absolutely true to the traditions of the bad 
old diplomacy, for any nation could agree to 
them and yet reserve the right to interpret them 
in diametrically opposite manner to the interpre- 
tation that others put upon them. 

Therefore in forming the league let us face 


1048 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  {Jan. 


the facts, whether pleasant or unpleasant, and let 
us show good faith with ourselves and with 
every one else. The first fact is that nations do 
not stand on any real equality, and that at this 
moment we are not so treating them. A couple 
of years ago Hayti and San Domingo were two 
little independent republics. According to the 
principles Mr. Wilson has publicly laid down 
they were as much entitled to the right of self- 
determination as the United States or France, 
and all our dealing with them should have been 
frank and above-board. But in practice Mr. Wil- 
son conquered them, killed large numbers of their 
people, deprived them of self-determination, and 
kept the action and the reason for the action ab- 
solutely secret. During the same period, in deal- 
ing with the affairs of China, a huge but pacifist 
power, unarmed and helpless, Mr. Wilson made 
his most important agreement about this peaceful 
republic’s future not with China at all but with 
the Empire of Japan. 

As Mr. Wilson practices only secret diplomacy 
we cannot tell what his justification for these vari- 
ous actions may be. But it is of course obvious 
that it would be absurd to include in a league 
of nations countries like China, Mexico, Hayti 
and San Domingo, on a make-believe equality 
with the United States and Japan. And there are 
dozens of other countries which stand in the same 
category. Moreover, there are some very big 
nations whose recent action would make reliance 
on any of their promises proof of a feeble intellect 
on our part. Most certainly Germany and 
Turkey ought to sit on the mourners’ bench a 
good many years before we admit them to fel- 
lowship — and if any foolish person says that 


1919] LEAGUE OF NATIONS 1049 


the German people and the German Government 
were not the same thing, it is enough to point out 
that the German people throughout supported the 
German Government as long as its wrongdoing 
seemed likely to be successful, and abandoned 
the government only when the Allied armies ob- 
tained a military decision over those of Germany 
and her vassals. Russia’s action during the last 
year would make any international guarantee of 
action on her part worth precisely nothing as a 
warrant for promise or action on our part. 
Therefore, let us begin by including in the 
league only the present allies, and admit other 
mations only as their conduct persevered in 
through a term of years warrants it. Let us ex- 
plicitly reserve certain rights — to our territorial 
possessions, to our control of immigration and 
citizenship, to our fiscal policy, and to our hand- 
ling of our domestic problems generally — as not 
to be questioned and not to be brought before any 
international tribunal. As regards impotent or 
disorderly nations and people outside the league, 
let us be very cautious about guaranteeing to in- 
terfere with or on behalf of them where they 
lie wholly outside our sphere of interest; and let 
us announce that our own sphere of special con- 
cern, in America (perhaps limited to north of 
somewhere near the equator), is not to be in- 
fringed on by European or Asiatic powers. 
Moreover, let us absolutely decline any dis- 
armament proposition that would leave us help- 
less to defend ourselves. Let us absolutely re- 
fuse to abolish nationalism; on the contrary, let 
us base a wise and practical internationalism on 
a sound and intense nationalism. There is not 
and never has been the slightest danger of this 


1090 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [{Jan. 


country being militaristic or a menace to other na- 
tions. The danger is the exact reverse. Keep 
our navy as second to that of Great Britain. In- 
troduce universal military training; say nine 
months with the colors for every young man 
somewhere between the ages of nineteen and 
twenty-three, with extra intensive training for 
the officers and non-commissioned officers, and 
preliminary work, includng especially technical, 
industrial and agricultural training, of the most 
practical kind, in the schools for the boys of six- 
teen to eighteen. We would thereby secure an 
army which would never be desirous of an of- 
fensive war; and its mere existence would be the 
best possible guarantee that we would never have 
to wage an offensive war. Prepare in advance 
the material necessary for the use of our first 
line when called out; don’t forget that we were 
able to fight in this war only because our allies 
gave us at the battle front the necessary cannon, 
tanks, gas machines, airplanes and machine guns 
—for until almost the end of the war we had 
practically none of our own on the fighting line. 

Then, when all this has been done, let us with 
deep seriousness ponder every promise we make, 
so as to be sure that our people will fulfill it. 
It will be worse than idle for us to enter any 
league if, when the test comes in the future, this 
country acts as badly as it did in refusing to 
make any protest when Germany violated the 
Hague Conventions, in refusing to go to war 
when the Lusitania was sunk, and in refusing to 
go to war with Bulgaria or Turkey at all. As 
for Germany, unless her cynical violation of the 
Hague treaties is punished we put a premium on 
any violation of any similar treaty hereafter. 


IgI9] EVES TO THE FRONT IO51 


Remember that the essential principle of the 
league, if it is to be successful, must be the will- 
ingness of each nation to fight for the right in 
some quarrel in which at the moment it seems 
we have no material concern. The will-power, 
the intelligent farsightedness, and the stern de- 
votion to duty implied in such action stand in- 
finitely above the loose willingness to promise 
anything characteristic of so many of the most 
vociferous advocates of such a league. 

Let us go into such a league. But let us 
weigh well what we promise; and then train our- 
selves in body and soul to keep our promises. 
Let us treat the formation of the league as an 
addition to but in no sense as a substitute for pre- 
paring our own strength for our own defense. 
And let us build a genuine internationalism, that 
is, a genuine and generous regard for the rights of 
others, on the only healthy basis: —a sound and 
intense development of the broadest spirit of 
American nationalism. Our steady aim must be 
to do justice to others, and to secure our own 
nation against injustice; and we can achieve this 
twofold aim only if we make our deeds square 
with our words. 


BYES TO THE FRONT 


AN ARTICLE PUBLISHED IN THE METROPOLITAN 
MAGAZINE IN FEBRUARY, IQIQ 


In the new Congress, which will be controlled 
by the. Republicans, there is very much to do. 
A large proportion of the work will have to take 
the shape of unraveling the twisted confusion into 
which the Wilson Administration has thrown 


1052 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Feb. 


almost every important feature of governmental 
policy. But the Congress must not permit itself 
only to do this work. It must itself keep its 
eyes on the future and begin to build for the 
future. The great war has put us in a new 
world. In this new world we must resolutely 
cling to the old things that were good, but we 
must also fearlessly adopt the new expedients im- 
perative to bring justice under the new conditions. 

The farmer, the working man and the business 
man are, of course, the three people upon whose 
welfare the welfare of all the rest of us and of 
the country depends. 

With the farmers what is especially needed is 
that we shall accept their own best leadership and 
best thought about telling us what we are to do. 
Men like Henry C. Wallace of Iowa and Senator- 
Elect Capper of Kansas, and many others whom 
I could name, thoroughly understand the farmer ; 
are farmers themselves; speak the farmer’s lan- 
guage and know his needs. What we need is 
to have men of this stamp set forth the farmers’ 
viewpoint; and the rest of us must intelligently 
appreciate this viewpoint, and so far as possible 
embody in legislation what men of this stamp 
regard as the salient needs. It is very earnestly 
to be hoped that a determined effort will be made 
to send to both houses of Congress men who are 
farmers and who out of their own experience can 
speak of the farmers’ need. There is much that 
should be done by government, and by preference 
by the national government, to prevent hold-up 
actions at the expense of the farmer in market- 
ing his produce. But even more can be done’ 
by codperation among the farmers themselves. 
The extraordinary success of the Illinois farmers 


1919] EVES TO THE FRONT 1053 


in acquiring, owning and operating the grain 
elevators is a lesson of the utmost importance to 
all our people; the present head of the State Ag- 
ricultural Department of Illinois was a leader 
in the work of bringing it about. Experience in 
the past has taught us to look with grave sus- 
picion upon the entry into politics of such a farm- 
ers’ association. The Non-Partisan League re- 
ceived much of its support because of the fact 
that there were serious grievances of which the 
farmer had a right to complain and with which 
the old parties had failed adequately to deal. 
The bulk of the leadership of the association 
however, speedily took a position that rendered it 
impossible for self-respecting Americans to sup- 
port them, as they verged dangerously near down- 
right disloyalty in international relations, and in 
home affairs sought to establish close relations 
with the I. W. W., and preached a malicious 
class hatred of the exact type which has brought 
Russia to ruin. It cannot too often be said that 
the man who seeks to arouse malignant class 
hatred in this country is exactly as dangerous a 
character as the man who tries to subject us to 
a foreign power. He is guilty of moral treason 
to the Republic. The farmer is emphatically the 
producer. He has not had a square deal. He 
has not been put in the position to which he is 
entitled. If he is not given the right kind of 
leadership he will follow the wrong kind of lead- 
ership, and therefore it behooves the Republican 
party in Congress to get men competent to speak 
for the farmer, and to make an earnest affirma- 
tive effort to start this nation on a course of 
policy which will put the farmers of this na- 
tion on a level never elsewhere attained. 


1054 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Feb. 


Of equal importance with the farm situa- 
tion is the labor situation. We must never 
again permit the wage worker to be looked upon 
primarily as a mere cog in the industrial ma- 
chine. He must be looked upon as a citizen; 
given every chance possible to do the best that 
he can do, and held to a strict accountability 
if he refuses to do it. Of course, labor must 
have the right to collective bargaining. More- 
over, we should endeavor cautiously to introduce 
a system of representation on the directorates, so 
that labor shail have its voice just as much as 
those who furnish the capital and those who 
furnish the management. I am, of course, en- 
tirely aware that this process can only succeed 
to the degree in which the workers themselves 
prove their ability to select and reward the right 
type of leadership and to combine full considera- 
tion for the rights of others with insistence on 
their own rights. Most emphatically every ef- 
fort should be made to keep up the wages of 
labor and, above all, not to let them be thrust 
down faster than the prices of things which 
labor needs and has to pay for. The eight-hour 
day should become the standard industrial day 
in all lines of work; there must be certain ex- 
ceptions, but these should be treated as excep- 
tions. There should be some federal control 
of itinerant and seasoned labor under a federal 
employment bureau. This is the type of labor 
which is in least satisfactory condition and which 
makes the I. W. W. possible. It should be care- 
fully studied and action taken toward the end 
that we finally eliminate this type of labor al- 
together by arranging our agricultural and 


1919] EYES TO THE FRONT 1055 


industrial status so as to absorb this labor all 
the year round. Of course, it would need a 
number of years to accomplish this purpose. 
We should spend hundreds of millions of dollars 
reclaiming land for the returning soldier and 
arranging labor bureaus so that he may be cer- 
tain to have every chance to work. The man 
who has gone into the army should be given 
in peculiar fashion the best chance that this coun- 
try affords to become a farmer, or to work at 
his trade or profession. If possible he should be 
encouraged to become a farmer, in accordance 
with some such plan as that proposed by Secre- 
tary Lane. Old-age pensions and accident and 
involuntary unemployment insurance should, of 
course, become part of our settled policy. The 
industrious and thrifty worker should be guar- 
anteed the self-respect of honorable independence 
and of an assured future. 

The immigration policy cannot be considered 
apart from the labor policy. We should have 
an infinitely more drastic method of exclusion 
of undesirable immigrants, and we should begin 
an active course of education and distribution 
among the immigrants that are admitted. The 
most rigid steps should be taken to prevent any 
people of the Bolshevist type from coming here. 
They are not in the least grateful for being al- 
lowed to come. They add to the sum of misery, 
discontent and anarchy, and they do no good to 
themselves or to any one else. Our prime pur- 
pose should be to maintain the living and work- 
ing standards of the American working people. 
No immigrant should be admitted here who would 
lower those standards, and this is especially true 


1036 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES  [Feb. 


of the next few years, when we wish to see our 
working men retain what they have gotten, and 
our returned soldiers taken care of. 

Business and labor cannot be considered 
separately. It is quite impossible permanently 
to elevate labor if business does not pay, and if 
the payment the business gets is not equitably 
divided with labor there is no use whatever of 
having it. We ought to set our faces against 
any restriction of production, or any requirement 
that the good and skillful workman be kept down 
to the level of the incompetent or the lazy. But 
we ought also to insist, and wherever necessary 
to guarantee by government action, that an equi- 
table share of the increased work done by the 
skillful man go to that man himself. To secure 
justice along these and many other lines there 
must be government control; but government 
control cannot accomplish anything if it disre- 
gards the axioms of industrial production and 
success. The first essential for successful gov- 
ernment control is care for the thing controlled. 
Our recent experience with the railroads is 
enough to show us this. Fifteen and twenty 
years ago there was a riot of uncontrolled and 
greedy individualism in the railway business in 
this country. It had to be stopped, and was 
stopped. Then, as so often happens, in a reac- 
tion against bad conduct there was refusal to 
do justice. There was refusal to allow the rail- 
roads to make the profit necessary if the needed 
amount of money was to be invested, and to 
make the combinations necessary if their work 
was to be done efficiently. The war came — 
the railroads were taken over. An immense 
increase of rates was at once made, and, of 


IgI9] EVES TO THE FRONT 1057 


course, combinations were encouraged in every 
way. Wages were raised with great rapidity. 
But the net result has been utterly bewildering 
to everybody; the original situation was bad; 
some of the experimentation has been equally 
bad; and the President himself, after one and 
one-half years’ experience, says he does not know 
what to suggest, and throws the problem back 
on Congress. Of course, and properly, the 
workers wish at least to retain wages at their 
present standard. They can only do it if they 
give very efficient service, and, furthermore, if 
the business conditions are such as to make the 
railways prosper. If they don’t prosper, then 
neither government ownership nor individual 
ownership will result in benefit to the working 
man. My own preference is for a unified system 
of transportation under about as close govern- 
ment supervision as that exercised over the 
Federal National Banks under the Federal 
Reserve Banking Act. But the government can- 
not fix rates unless it makes full allowance for, 
and if necessary takes part in, fixing the costs. 
I earnestly hope that wages can be kept up for 
every man who has done his full duty during the 
last year and a half in whatever his work was 
— railroading, shipyards, munition plants. If he 
was foreman of a gang of riveters and has driven 
more rivets than ever before, I should regard it 
as a calamity to have his wages reduced ; but if he 
has driven only half the number of rivets for an 
increased wage, or worked only four hours a 
day, or only three days a week, then I am utterly 
indifferent as to his wages being reduced. 

It is impossible in an article like this to even 
touch on most of the questions ahead of us. 


10588 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [March 


Take the merchant marine, for instance. We 
should provide for it in permanent fashion, and 
the government should control it rigidly and be 
able when necessity arises to dictate the char- 
acter of tonnage and the destination of ships 
quickly and without question; of course, person- 
ally I should prefer that this be done under pri- 
vate ownership. And there should be no further 
delay in giving the women the right to vote by 
federal amendment. It is an absurdity longer 
to higgle about the matter. 


BRING THE FIGHTING MEN HOME 


ON JANUARY 2, I9QI9, COLONEL ROOSEVELT DIC- 
TATED THIS ARTICLE TO HIS SECRETARY WHO 
TOOK IT TO HIM ON SATURDAY, JANUARY 4. 
ONE OF THE LAST THINGS HE DID ON THE 
SUNDAY EVENING BEFORE HIS DEATH WAS TO 
CORRECT THE TYPEWRITTEN COPY. IT APPEARED 
IN THE METROPOLITAN MAGAZINE IN MARCH, 


we) 


Our army abroad is composed of three ele- 
ments. The first includes the officers and men 
who have entered the regular army as a per- 
manent profession. These men’s homes are 
in the regular army wherever it may be and 
they are indifferent as to where they are ordered, 
and the best among them accept the Philippines, 
or Mexican Border, or Panama with like equa- 
nimity. There are, second, the volunteers. 
These include the national guard regiments and 
also very many men who went into the regular 
regiments and the drafted divisions because 


1919] BRING THE SOLDIERS HOME 1059 


thereby they could quickest get to the other side. 
These men entered for the one great purpose 
of beating Germany to her knees and winning the 
war. Third, the drafted men. These were 
drafted under a law specially devised to pro- 
vide for fighting this great war through to a 
successful ending. Congress never would have 
passed such a law if there had been any thought 
of permitting the men to be kept away from 
their ordinary business and from the task of 
earning their livelihood for themselves and those 
dependent upon them in order to take part in 
obscure European contests as to which the Ameri- 
can people as a whole has little interest or in- 
formation. 

There are in this country, however, many 
regulars and many volunteers who did not get 
over into the fighting, who bitterly regret this 
fact and who would welcome the chance to see 
some service overseas under the American flag no 
matter what form it might take. 

There are plenty of politicians willing to go 
to any maudlin extreme in praising our soldiers 
when) they don’t have to translate the praise 
into anything effective. But there has been al- 
together too much acquiescence in the really scan- 
dalous failure of our Administration to see that 
the soldiers are promptly paid, that the allot- 
ments to their dependent relatives are promptly 
issued, that such a simple thing as getting them 
their mail is efficiently done and that reasonable 
expedition is shown in letting their kinsfolk at 
home know when they are killed or wounded. 
There have been the queerest abuses in the re- 
fusal to allow the promotions whether for dough- 
boys, medical men or any other which have 


1060 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES [March 


been recommended by and on behalf of the men 
actually on the firing line. But the most serious 
grievance is the proposal which has appeared in 
the public press from both the State and War 
Departments and indeed the Navy Department 
also to the effect that it might be a year or twa 
before our men were brought home because 
they would be needed to police Europe and pre- 
serve order. 

Now, as regards Russia. I cannot speak with 
decision because neither I nor any one else knows 
what has been promised explicitly or implicitly by 
the Administration — and I am by no means cer- 
tain that the Administration itself knows. We 
must keep our promises. But it does seem ex- 


ceedingly silly to have our gallant boys waging a . 


midwinter campaign south of Archangel for ob- 
jects which President Wilson has with determined 


furtiveness kept to himself. Surely the men at- 


Archangel can be brought home. In Siberia, 
however, the case is different. The Administra- 
tion has waged war in Siberia with the maximum 
of fatuity. We went in to aid the heroic Czecho- 
Slovaks. We took no really efficient steps to 
aid them, but we did do enough to make the 
Bolshevists, who unquestionably at the moment 
represent the majority of the Russian people — 
feel that we are their armed enemies. In fact 
the Administration in Siberia went on the theory 
of the back-woodsman, who, seeing a black object 
in the twilight, fired so as to hit it if it was a 
bear and miss it if it was a calf. This is 
never a plan that is conducive to good marks- 
manship. If fifty thousand troops under General 
Wood had been sent to Siberia last April, the 
American, Czecho-Slovak and allied line would 


SS ee eee eee ee oe 


1919] BRING THE SOLDIERS HOME 1061 


now have been west of the Urals, and possibly 
in Moscow. But we sent an insufficient force 
too late and we wouldn’t permit that force to 
do anything. Now, most emphatically we must 
keep our engagements. Under no consideration 
must we abandon the Czecho-Slovaks and the 
Siberians who have trusted to our promises, nor 
need there be any difficulty about sending over 
plenty of troops to their aid. The regular army 
and any number of volunteers would eagerly go. 

I emphatically disbelieve in any proposal to 
conquer Russia with an alien army and order 
her to set up the sort of Government which we 
think the Russians ought to have. Such an army 
tends to unite all the people of the country against 
it simply because it is foreign. We should give 
all the means and arms that we can to the Rus- 
sians who are our allies and who have been anti- 
German and to whom we have been committed. 
If, as they say, the majority of the people are 
with them, then they will upset the Bolsheviki. 
But we have finished the great war with Ger- 
many, the war which brought about our inter- 
ference in Russia. I do not believe in keeping 
our men on the other side to patrol the Rhine, 
or police Russia, or interfere in Central Europe 
or the Baltic Peninsula. At the peace table it 
is to be presumed we shall give to each nation- 
ality all the aid we can in peaceful fashion. 
But I do not believe that the United States should 
enter into a world-wide career of disinterested 
violence for the right; because where both the 
lands and the issues involved are remote from 
us our people wouldn’t know with certainty 
where the right lay and wouldn’t feel that we 
ought to go into the quarrel. We have enough 


1062 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES 


to do that is our business. Mexico is our Bal- 
tic Peninsula and during the last five years, 
thanks largely to Mr. Wilson’s able assistance, 
it has been reduced to a condition as hideous as 
that of the Balkan Peninsula under Turkish 
rule. We are in honor bound to remedy this. 
wrong and to keep ourselves so prepared that 
the Monroe Doctrine, especially as regards the 
jands in any way controlling the approach to the 
Panama Canal, shall be acepted as immutable 
international law. 


SAYINGS OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT 


FROM THE OUTSET OF HIS PUBLIC LIFE, COLONEL 
ROOSEVELT WAS NOTED FOR HIS ABILITY TO SCORE 
HIS POINT WITH CLARITY AND POSITIVENESS. 
MANY OF HIS EPIGRAMMATIC UTTERANCES, 
SUCH AS THE FOLLOWING HAVE BECOME COINS 
CURRENT IN THE LANGUAGE: 


I INTEND to vote the Republican Presidential 
ticket. A man cannot act both without and 
within the party; he can do either, but he cannot 
possibly do both. Each course has its advan- 
tages, and each has its disadvantages, and one 
cannot take the advantages or the disadvantages 
separately. I went in with my eyes open to do 
what I could within the party; I did my best and 
got beaten, and I propose to stand by the result.— 
From a statement in 1884, when Roosevelt was 
twenty-five years of age, during the Blaine-Cleve- 
land campaign. Roosevelt had supported Ed- 
munds for the nomination against Blaine. 


A man who is good enough to shed his blood 


SAYINGS OF ROOSEVELT 1063 


for the country is good enough to be given a 
square deal afterwards——From the “Life of 
Benton,” 1886. 


The man who becomes Europeanized, who 
loses his power of doing good work on this side 
of the water and who loses his love for his native 
land is not a traitor, but he is a silly and undesir- 
able citizen—From “ American Ideals,” 1897. 


Unquestionably no community that is actually 
diminishing in numbers is in a healthy condition, 
and as the world is now, with huge waste places 
still to fill up with much of the competition be- 
tween the races reducing itself to the warfare of 
the cradle, no race has any chance to win a great 
place unless it consists of good breeders as well 
as of good fighters—From “American Ideals,” 


1897. 


We do not wish, in politics, in literature, or in 
art, to develop that unwholesome parochial spirit, 
that overexaltation of the little community at the 
expense of the great nation, which produces what 
has been described as the patriotism of the vil- 
lage, the patriotism of the belfry. . . . The 
patriotism of the village or the belfry is bad, but 
the lack of all patriotism is even worse.— From 
“ American Ideals,” 1897. 


Peace is a goddess only when she comes with 
a sword girt on thigh.—From “American Ideals,” 


1897. 


I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble 
ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the 
life of toil and effort, of labor ana strife; to 
preach that highest form of success which comes, 


1064 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES 


not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but 
to the man who does not shrink from danger, 
from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out 
of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.— 
From “ The Strenuous Life,” 1900, 


When at the White House 


The mechanism of modern business is so deli- 
cate that extreme care must be taken not to inter- 
fere with it in a spirit of rashness or ignorance. 
Many of those who have made it their vocation 
to denounce the great industrial combinations, 
which are popularly, although with technical in- 
accuracy, known as “ trusts,” appeal especially to 
hatred and fear. These are precisely the two 
emotions, particularly when combined with igno- 
rance, which unfit men for the exercise of cool 
and steady judgment.—From first annual mes- 
sage, December 3, 1901. 


When home ties are loosened, when men and 
women cease to regard a worthy family life, with 
all its duties fully performed, and all its re- 
sponsibilities lived up to, as the life best worth 
living ; then evil days for the commonwealth are 
at hand. There are regions in our land, and 
classes of our population, where the birth rate 
has sunk below the death rate. Surely it should 
need no demonstration to show that willful 
sterility is, from the standpoint of the human 
race, the one sin for which the penalty is na- 
tional death, race death; a sin for which there 
is no atonement—From sixth annual message, 
December 3, 1900. 


SAYINGS OF ROOSEVELT 1065 


As I emphatically disbelieve in seeing Harvard 
or any other college turn out mollycoddles in- 
stead of vigorous men, I may add that I do not in 
the least object to a sport because it is rough.— 
From a speech at Cambridge, Mass., February 23, 
1907. 


This nation should help in every practicable 
way in the education of the Chinese people, so 
that the vast and populous Empire of China may 
gradually adapt itself to modern conditions. 

. . Our educators should, so far as possible, 
take concerted action to this end.—From seventh 
annual message, December 3, 1907. 


There is no moral difference between gambling 
at cards or in lotteries or on race track and 
gambling in the stock market. One method is 
just as pernicious to the body politic as the other 
kind, and in degree the evil worked is far greater. 
—From special message, January 31, 1908. 


There is a homely old adage which runs: 
“ Speak softly and carry a big stick: you will go 
far.” If the American Nation will speak softly, 
and yet build, and keep at a pitch of the highest 
training a thoroughly efficient navy, the Monroe 
Doctrine will go far—From addresses and mes- 
sages. 


Let us all strive, according to our ability and as 
far as conditions will permit, to secure to the man 
of one color who behaves uprightly and honestly, 
with thrift and with foresight, the same oppor- 
tunity for reward and for living his life under 
the protection of the law and without molestation 
by outsiders, that would be his if he were of an- 


1066 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES 


other color. The avenues of employments 
should be open to one as to the other ; the protec- 
tion of the laws should be guaranteed to one as to 
the other.— From a speech at Washington, Nov- 
ember 26, 1908. 


What He Said in Europe 


The deadening effect on any race of the adop- 
tion of a logical and extreme socialistic system 
could not be overstated ; it would spell sheer de- 
struction; it would produce grosser wrong and 
outrage, fouler immorality than any existing 
system. But this does not mean that we may not 
with great advantage adopt certain of the prin- 
ciples proposed by some given set of men who 
happen to call themselves Socialists; to be afraid 
to do so would be to make a mark of weakness on 
our part— From the Sorbonne address, April 
23, 1910. 


One of the prime dangers of civilization has 
always been its tendency to cause the loss of the 
virile fighting qualities, of the fighting edge. 
When men get too comfortable and lead too lux- 
urious lives, there is always danger lest the soft- 
ness eat like an acid into their manliness of fiber. 
The barbarian, because of the very conditions of 
his life, is forced to keep and develop certain 
hardy qualities which the man of aivilization 
tends to lose, whether he be clerk, factory hand, 
merchant, or even a certain type of farmer.— 
University of Berlin address, May 12, 1910. 


In our complex industrial civilization of to- 
day the peace of righteousness and justice, the 
only kind of peace worth having, is at least as 


SAYINGS OF ROOSEVELT 1067 


necessary in the industrial world as it is among 
nations. ‘There is at least as much need to curb 
the cruel greed and arrogance of part of the 
world of capital, to curb the cruel greed and vio- 
lence of part of the world of labor, as to check a 
cruel and unhealthy militarism in international 
relationships.— From the University of Berlin 
address, May 12, 1910. 


There are certain problems which both of us 
[Great Britain and America] have to solve, and 
as to which our standards should be the same. 
The Englishman, the man of the British Isles in 
his various homes across the sea, and the Ameri- 
can, both at home and abroad are brought into 
contact with utterly alien peoples, some with a 
civilization more ancient than our own, others 
still in, or having but recently arisen from, the 
barbarism which our people left behind ages ago. 

It would be foolish indeed to pay heed to the 
unwise persons who desire disarmament to be 
begun by the very people who, of ail others, 
should not be left helpless before any possible 
foe. But we must reprobate quite as strongly 
both the leaders and the peoples who practice, or 
encourage, or condone, aggression and iniquity 
by the strong at the expense of the weak. We 
should tolerate Jawlessness and _ wickedness 
neither by the weak nor by the strong; and both 
weak and strong we should in return treat with 
scrupulous fairness— From an address at Ox- 
ford University, England, June 7, 1910. 


The New Nationalism 


All that the new Nationalism means is the 
application of certain old-time moralities to the 


® 
1068 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES 


changed conditions of the day. I wish to see 
greater governmental efficiency because we have 
to deal with greater business efficiency. Simple 
laws are all that are necessary in small communi- 
ties where there is no big business and each man 
works for himself. When you get masses of 
wealth gathered together and great corporations 
developing, conditions then become so changed 
that there must be an increase in governmental 
activity to control the wealth for business effi- 
ciency. I would not do wrong to the great cor- 
poration, but I don’t intend to rely only on the big 
corporation’s good nature to see that the corpora- 
tion doesn’t do harm against us. I want to see 
such control of the wealth now gathered for busi- 
ness uses as to favor the honest man who uses the 
wealth genuinely for the service of the public and 
to make the dishonest man feel that he has to do 
what is right ; and if he doesn’t feel it, we shall see 
to it that he does. That is my whole creed— 
From speech at Riverhcad, L. I., September 15, 
1910. 


So long as I have any influence left I shall pro- 
test against arbitration between this and any other 
country which will not keep its agreements. Ar- 
bitration is all well enough under favorable condi- 
tions, but not otherwise. It isn’t right to arbi- 
trate with a country when you know that that 
country will not keep an agreement if it comes to 
a pinch. 

If you think that the people of the United 
States want universal peace arbitration I suggest 
that you go to California and investigate condi- 
tions. I have no use for liars, national, interna- 
tional, or those found in private life— From a 
speech in Arlington Cemetery, Atay 31, 1911. 


SAYINGS OF ROOSEVELT 1069 


I am in this fight for certain principles, and the 
first and most important of these goes back to 
Sinai, and is embodied in the commandment, 
“Thou shalt not steal,’ “ Thou shalt not steal a 
nomination.” Thou shalt neither steal in politics 
nor in business. Thou shalt not steal from the 
people the birthright of the people to rule them- 
selves. 

I hold, in the language of the Kentucky Court 
of Appeals, that “ stealing is stealing.” No peo- 
ple is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn 
between stealing an office and stealing a purse. 
No truly honest man should be satisfied with an 
office to which his title is not as valid as that of 
the homestead which shelters his family— From 
a speech in Chicago, June 22, 1912. 


For the Protection of Labor 


In the last twenty years an increasing percent- 
age of our people have come to depend on indus- 
try for their livelihood, so that to-day the wage 
workers in industry rank in importance side by 
side with the tiller of the soil. As a people we 
cannot afford to let any group of citizens, any 
individual citizen, live or labor under conditions 
which are injurious to the common welfare. In- 
dustry, therefore, must submit to such public reg- 
ulation as will make it a means of life and health, 
not of death or inefficiency. We must protect the 
crushable elements at the base of our present in- 
dustrial structure— From a speech in Chicago, 
August 6, 1912. 


During the last half of the nineteenth century 
the leaders of reaction in the United States, po- 
litical and financial alike, gradually grew to recog- 


1070 )6©606p. NEW ER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES 


nize in the judiciary their most powerful potential 
ally. ‘There was very little actual corruption on 
the bench; on the contrary, our Judges have been, 
on the whole, both able and upright public serv- 
ants, standing on a level probably higher than that 
of any other civil servants of the Government. 
But their whole training and the aloofness of 
their position on the bench prevent their having, 
as a rule, any real knowledge of, or understanding 
sympathy with, the livessand needs of the ordi- 
nary hard-working toiler— From a speech at 
Santiago, Chile, November 22, 1913. 


It seems to me that we should realize with the 
keenest gratitude how much we owe to the fact 
that by steady application of the Monroe Doctrine 
this country has succeeded in preventing the colo- 
nization of this continent by the great military 
Old World powers. If it had not been for the 
existence of that doctrine, and its support by this 
Government under Presidents of all shades of 
political belief, the great military nations of the 
Old World would unquestionably long ere this 
have possessed masses of territory in the western 
hemisphere. In such case nothing under heaven 
could have prevented our being involved in Euro- 
pean struggles like the present. We would also 
in such case be under the crushing burden of im- 
mense armaments in time of peace, a burden the 
bearing of which has grown more enormous year 
by year in Europe. Well meaning and amiable 
but shortsighted persons have from time to time 
protested against the Monroe Doctrine and said it 
was outworn. I wish these good persons would 
seriously consider the present contest and realize 
that if it had not been for the Monroe Doctrine in 


SAYINGS OF ROOSEVELT 1071 


the past, and if the Monroe Doctrine were at this 
moment abandoned, the United States would, in 
all probability, have been drawn into the present 
dreadful struggle— From a speech at Hartford, 
Conn., August 15, 1914. 


It is the country’s duty to put itself into such 
shape that it will be able to defend its rights if 
they are invaded. I myself have seen the plans 
of at least two empires now involved in the war 
to capture our great cities and hold them for ran- 
som because our standing army is too weak to 
protect them. I have seen plans prepared delib- 
erately to take both San Francisco and New York 
and hold them for ransom that would cripple our 
country and give funds to the enemy for carrying 
on the war.— From a speech at Trenton, N. J., 
October 30, 1914. 


Criticism of the Wilson Administration 


To the extent of my power I supported Mr. 
Wilson either by silence or by open championship 
as long as there was the remotest chance that in 
standing by him as President I was also standing 
by the honor and interest of the country. I con- 
strued every doubt, both as regards Mexico, as 
regards Germany, and as regards Belgium, in his 
favor, often against my innermost convictions, as 
long as it was possible to do so. 

I insisted to myself and to others that President 
Wilson doubtless had some definite plan; that he 
doubtless had sources of information unknown to 
the outside public which rendered proper his 
course, both as regards Mexico and Belgium, 
until I became convinced beyond a shadow of a 
doubt that such was not the case; that he had no 


1072 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES 


secret facts at his command, other than corrobo- 
rative of the facts known to me and to all other 
intelligent men, and that he had no plan whatever 
save by adroit elocution to cover inaction and re- 
fusal to perform national and international duty. 
— From an article in The Metropolitan Maga- 
zine, May, 1915. 


We have been culpably, well nigh criminally, 
remiss as a nation in not preparing ourselves dur- 
ing this year; and if, with the lessons taught the 
world by the dreadful tragedies of the last twelve 
months, we continue with soft complaisance to 
stand helpless and naked before the world, we 
shall excite only contempt and derision, if, and 
when, disaster ultimately overwhelms us.— From 
a speech in San Francisco, July 21, 1915. 


Professional pacifists, the peace-at-any-price, 
non-resistance, universal arbitration people are 
seeking to Chinafy this country — From a speech 
in San Francisca, July 21, 1915. 


During the last year this nation has negotiated 
some thirty all-inclusive peace treaties by which 
it is agreed that if any issue arises, no matter of 
what kind, between itself and any other nation, it 
would take no final steps about it until a commis- 
sion of investigation had discussed the matter for 
a year. This was an explicit promise in each 
case that if American women were raped and 
American men were murdered, as had actually oc- 
curred in Mexico, or American men, women, and 
children drowned on the high seas, as in the case 
of the Gulfight and Lusitania, or if a foreign 
power secured and fortified Magdalena Bay or the 


ee ee eee 


SAVINGS OF ROOSEVELT 1073 


Island of St. Thomas, we would appoint a com- 
mission and listen to a year’s conversation before 
taking action— From a speech in San Francisco, 
July 21, 1915. 


Before We Entered the War 


Unfortunately it is evident that many of our 
public men are afraid of Germany, afraid of the 
professional German-American vote, and are will- 
ing to sacrifice the honor of this country to their 
fears. There is practically no French-American 
or English-American vote; and these politicians 
therefore feel that they can act against England 
and France with safety—and their motto is 
safety first— From a speech in Brooklyn, Jan- 
uary 30, 1916. 


Now you can have universal training or you 
can have voluntary training, but when you use 
the word “ voluntary ” after “ universal ” you are 
using a weasel word which sucks the meaning out. 

These are weasel words.— From a speech in St. 
Louts, May 31, 1916. 


I believe in democratic training, where the 
multi-millionaire and the son of the bricklayer 
will be in the same dog tent, and then have the 
best one of the bunch, whether the multi-million- 
aire’s son or the bricklayer’s son, made the officer. 
—From a speech in Oyster Bay, July 4, 1916. 


Instead of speaking softly and carrying a big 
stick, President Wilson spoke bombastically and 
carried a dishrag— From a speech at Louisville, 
October 19, 1916. 


1074 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES 


President Wilson has seen the Mexicans dur- 
ing these three and a half years become socially, 
politically, and morally bankrupt. He has not 
helped Mexico. He has ruined Mexico. The 
jungle is creeping over the great plantations. 
The cattle on the ranches have been wantonly and 
wastefully slaughtered. The thoroughbred stock 
farms which were the work of decades have been 
destroyed. Irrigation plants are out of service, 
railroad terminals have been burnt, rolling stock 
and locomotives broken up and damaged beyond 
repair. Mines that furnished employment to 
scores of thousands are standing idle. The Na- 
tional Treasury has been emptied. A paper cur- 
rency, debased and worthless, has been substituted 
for the nation’s money. All the means of an 
orderly, economic life have been destroyed. An 
epidemic of typhus rages that twice has menaced 
the health of our border cities. The country no 
longer produces sufficient foodstuffs. Actual 
starvation is upon the people. Sixty thousand 
white men, who were one of the great civilizing 
and developing forces of Mexico, are in exile.— 
From a speech at Phoenix, Ariz., October 22, 
1916. 


You say that hereafter nobody shall be neutral 
as respects the disturbance of the world’s peace 
for an object which the world’s opinion cannot 
sanction. What do you mean by this, Mr. Wilson? 
Why do you delay action to the future when you 
had The Hague Convention to warrant action in 
the present when Belgium’s neutrality was in- 
vaded, her cities despoiled, her men and women 
slaughtered? . If you mean what you say as 
to the future, then you must mean precisely and 


SAYINGS OF ROOSEVELT 1075 


exactly that this is your duty in the present. Do 

it now, Mr. President. It is sheer hypocrisy to 

chatter ten days before election as to what ought 

to be done in the future when throughout your 

whole term of office you have failed in the present 

to do what you now say is your duty From a 
speech in Brooklyn, October 29, 1916. 


I criticize him [Wilson] now because he has 
adroitly and cleverly and with sinister ability ap- 
pealed to all that is weakest and most unworthy 
in the American character; and also because he 
has adroitly and cleverly and with sinister ability 
sought to mislead many men and women who are 
neither weak nor unworthy, but who have been 
misled by a shadow dance of words. He has 
made our statesmanship a thing of empty elocu- 
tion. He has covered his fear of standing for 
the right behind a veil of rhetorical phrases. He 
has wrapped the true heart of the nation in a 
spangled shroud of rhetoric. He has kept the 
eyes of the people dazzled so that they know not 
what is real and what is false, so that they turn 
bewildered, unable to discern the difference be- 
tween the glitter that veneers evil and the stark 
realities of courage and honesty, of truth and 
strength. In the face of the world he has 
covered this nation’s face with shame as with 
a garment.— From a speech at Cooper Umon, 
November 2, 1916. 


I care little for the cubist school in patriotism. 
The effort to be original or being fantastic is al- 
ways cheap. Second-rate work is always second- 
rate, even if it is done badly.— From a speech on 


1076 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES 


“Nationalism in Literature and Art,’ November 
15, 1916. 


After We Entered the War 


The war has clearly raised two problems, the 
problem of the present, which is to help our allies 
to win this war by endeavoring in every way now 
to offset the effect of our utter failure to prepare 
in advance ; and the permanent problem, the prob- 
lem of defense against a future — perhaps a dis- 
tant, perhaps an immediately impending future — 
attack upon us when we have no allies; the prob- 
lem of preparing our strength as a permanent 
policy so that never again shall we be caught as 
shamefully unprepared as now, so that never 
again shall we be forced as at present to owe our 
safety purely to the valor of our allies and not to 
our own courage and strength,— From a speech 
at the county fair at Chatham, N. Y., September 


5» 1917. 


Much has been said about our being against the 
German Government but not against the German 
people. The attitude of the German-American 
press and the German Alliance in this country in 
their hearty support of the German Government 
and the practically unanimous support of that 
Government heretofore by the Germans at home 
shows that at present the Germans are back of 
the German Government. They have enthusias- 
tically supported its policy of brutal disregard of 
the rights of others. Until they reverse them- 
selves, until they cast off the yoke of militaristic 
autocracy, they identify themselves with it and 
force us to be against them. 

It is for the German people themselves to dif- 


SAYINGS OF ROOSEVELT 1077 


ferentiate themselves from their Government. 
Until they do this they force us to be against the 
German people as a necessary incident of being 
against the German Government.— From a 
speech at Kansas City, Mo., September 24, 1917. 


America is not to be made a polyglot boarding 
house for money hunters of twenty different na- 
tionalities who have changed their former country 
for this country only as farm-yard beasts change 
one feeding trough for another. America is a 
nation. No man has any right to come here and 
no man should be permitted to stay here unless he 
becomes an American and nothing else. Be loyal 
to the principles established by Washington and 
his fellows in 1776 and perpetuated by Lincoln 
and his fellows in 1861 and 1865. We must 
have in this country only one flag, and that flag 
the American flag ; only one language, the English 
language, the language of the Declaration of In- 
dependence, Washington’s Farewell Address, Lin- 
coln’s Gettysburg speech and the second inaugu- 
ral ; and but one loyalty, that to the United States. 
— From a speech to munition workers at Bridge- 
port, Conn., November 3, 1917. 


We must accept no peace except the peace of 
overwhelming victory. To accept an inconclu- 
sive peace would mean that the whole war would 
have to be fought over again by ourselves or our 
children. To accept an inconclusive peace would 
really mean to work for a German victory. 
Those who now demand such a peace are not only 
the enemies of America, but of democracy 
throughout the world, and stand on the level of 
the Bolsheviki, who have betrayed both Russia 
and her allies to the militaristic and capitalistic 


10778 NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES 


autocracy of the Hohenzollerns.— From a speech 
before Ohio Society of New York, January 12, 
1918. 


But I believe that the great majority of my fel- 
low-countrymen, when they finally take the trou- 
ble to think on the problem at all, will refuse to 
consent to or acquiesce in the Chinafication of 
this country. I believe that they will refuse to 
follow those who would make right helpless be- 
fore might, who would put a pigtail on Uncle 
Sam, and turn the Goddess of Liberty into a paci- 
fist female huckster clutching a bag of dollars, 
which she has not the courage to guard against 
aggression.— From a speech at Chicago, April 29, 
1918. 


You stand up when “ The Star-Spangled Ban- 
ner” is sung, not because of men who previously 
sang it, but because of the men who stood the 
bombardment through the night — for the man 
who stood up to the killing and did the killing 
when the need came. ‘That is why you are proud 
to be Americans now. ‘Talking amounts to less 
than nothing, save just to the degree in which it 
is turned into action, and in this country of ours 
the man who is not only ready to fight for it, but 
to fit himself to fight for it, the man who has not 
raised himself to be a soldier, and the woman who 
has not raised her boy to be a soldier for the right 
— neither one of them is entitled to citizenship in 
the Republic. Universal suffrage, to justify it- 
self, must be based on universal service. It is 
only you and your kind who have the absolutely 
clear title to the management of this Republic_— 
From a speech to soldiers at Camp Upton, No- 
vember 18, 1917. 


SAYINGS OF ROOSEVELT 1079 


I ask that we in this generation prove ourselves 
the spiritual heirs both of the men who wore the 
blue and of the men who wore the gray. But I 
make no appeal to the memory of the Copperhead 
pacifists who put peace above duty, who put love 
of ease and love of money-getting before devotion 
to country, and whose convictions were too weak 
to stir to action their tepid souls. —From a speech 
in Kansas City, May 30, 1918. 


Fifty-Fifty Americanism 


As regards Americanism, we must insist that 
there be in this country but one nationality, the 
American nationality. There must be no per- 
petuation in this country of separate national 
groups, with their separate languages and special 
loyalties to alien overseas flags. There can be no 
fifty-fifty Americanism in this country. There is 
room here for only 100 per cent. Americanism, 
only for those who are Americans and nothing 
else. We must have loyalty to only one flag, the 
American flag; and it is disloyal to the American 
flag to try to be loyal to any other, whether that 
other is a foreign flag or the black and red flag, 
which symbolize either anarchy or else treacher- 
ous hostility to a war for which the nation stands. 
— From a speech at Republican Convention at 
Saratoga, July 19, 1918. 


Two prime purposes of the American people at 
this time having precedence of all others are: 
First, to insist upon the absolute and thorough- 
going Americanization of our entire citizenship; 
and, second, to win the war; to win it as speedily 
as possible, and end it by the peace of overwhelm- 
ing victory, a peace which shall guarantee to us, 


io80 ~=NEWER ROOSEVELT MESSAGES 


and to our allies, and to all the well-behaved na- 
tions of the civilized world, lasting relief from the 
threat and horror of German world dominion.— 
From a speech before Republican Convention at 
Saratoga, N. Y., July 19, 1918. 


INDEX 


A 


Abuses of power, 
of, 65 

Adair vs. United States, 705 

Addams, Jane, 766 

Administration, Attack on pol- 
icy of, 720; Criticism of, by 
Congress, 357; Upholder of 
rights of property, 716 

Age of combination, The, 651 

Agitators and reactionaries, 
419; Enemies to reform, 377 

Agricultural institutions, spe- 
Cialization of, 475, 691 

Agriculture, basis of civiliza- 
tion, 217; Department of, 
128, 475, 527, 625, 688 

meg Our debt to the, 879, 

I 

America, We are fighting for, 
873; A negligible tactor, 913 

American, Duty of every, 864 


Prevention 


Americanism, On trial, 785, 
821; What it means, 855; No 
half and half, 867, 883, 


938, 946; Takes no account 
of creed or ancestry, 943 
Anarchy and Socialism, 418; 
pret by lawless violence, 

2 


Ancestry, my, 793, 947 
Animal Industry, ureau of, 


387 | ‘ 
Anthracite coal, Industry in, 
54; Strike, 204; trike 
Commission, 131, 134, 135 
Anti-injunction bill, 356 
Anti-rebate law, 116, 133 
Anti-trust law, 757 
Anti-trust laws, 20, 48, 119, 
133, 293, 326, 400, 661, 664, 
656, 663, 740-741; Offend 
ers under, 721 
Arid lands, Irrigation of, 623 
Army, Bring it home, 1058 
Assassination attempted, 749 


Associated Oil Company, 714 
Attorney-General, Report of, 


382 
B 


Baltimore, speech opening the 
Fourth Liberty Loan cam- 
paign at, 976 

Banks, National, Abuses in, 
614; Federal supervision of, 
605, 613, 663; State inspec- 
tion of, 24 

Bank panic, The, 640, 648 

Beef trust, Investigation of, 


432 
Beei-Packers, Judge Hum, 
phrey’s decision, 363; Othe: 
cases, 355 
Belgium, Enslavement of, 852; 
must be reinstated, 950 
Berlin, Tariff commission to, 


696 
Blacklisting, 703 
Block signals on railroads, 337 
“Boll weevil” in the South, 


§30 
Bolshevism, Menace of, 953, 
983, 1037; versus Kaiserism, 


991 
Boston, Method of city gov- 
ernment, 44 
Boycotting, 703 
“Brotherhood of Firemen,” 


71 
Bucket shop, Doing away with, 


711 
Business, Development of, 
652; Dishonest success in, 


716; Distress in, 666, 724, 
735; Failures in_ recent 
crises of, 664; Help not 
hamper, 927; Honesty in, 
642, 644, 724; Labor and, 
1056; pat of sound meth- 
ods in, 641, 648; Prosperity, 
399; Supervised by Govern- 
ment, 334 


1081 


1082 


Cc 


Capital, Federal supervision 
and relations of, 25, 27, 
188, 266; Combinations of, 
656; Organizations of, 189, 
403; Prevention of inflation 
of, 662; Private, a necessity 
for railroad development, 
13; Protection of, 717; 
tights and wrongs of, 677; 
Wrongdoing of, 687 

Capitalist and wage-worker, 18, 
220, 684; Justice to, 636; 
Needs of, 639; Rights of, 
611; Value of, 650 

Capitalistic combinations nec- 
essary to industrial progress, 


463 
“Captains of Industry,” 35, 
2, 164; Aid to progress, 89; 
?unishment for, 628 
Carnegie Hall, notable address 
at, 991, speech on negro war 
relief at, 1028 
Catholic Total 
Union, 289 
Centralization, 606, 654 
Chambers, Edward, 713 


Abstinence 


Channing’s essay on ‘“ The 
Union,” 614 ! 
Character, High individual 


average needed, 632 
Charleston Exposition, 25 
Chicago and Alton Railway 

deal, 724 
Chicago, Banks of, 722; Beef- 

packers of, 294; Labor 

troubles in, 273 f 
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy 

railway, 380 
Child labor, 537, 172, 230, 

685; In District of Colum: 

bia, 737; Law, 455; Need 

of state legislation on, 413; 

Regulation of, 684 
Children, a _ national asset, 

590 
acess Example of, 779, 787, 

50 
Chinese, Exclusion of, 

Coolies barred, 360; 

law, 172 
Christian, Definition of, 406; 

Duties of, 407 
Church, and industrial prob- 

lems, 28; Members, Duties 

of, 29 


3565 
Labor 


INDEX 


Cities, Growth of, 690 

Citizens, Duty of, 392; Good 
_and bad, 308 , 

Citizenship, American, Pride 
in, 642; Fundamentals of, 
635; Good and bad, 151 

City government, Cleanliness 
in, 725; Corrupt, 613 

Civic duty, 641; Civic im- 
proveaies 12; Civic _man- 
nood, 642; Civic life, Honor 
in, 634; Civic righteousness, 
.035, O41 i 

Civilization rests on rights of 
_Property, 637 

Civil War, 54, 632 

Class government, 144 

Class hatred, 271, 421, 449 

Class spirit, 344 

Combinations, Age of, 
Destruction of 
662; Legality of, 709; Pre- 
vention of, 651, 657; Re- 
striction of, 662; Value of, 


300; 


657 

Commerce, A_ channel for, 
620; Advances in, 302 

Commerce and labor, Depart- 
ment of, 191, 354, 400, 527, 
691 

Comes rates, Advance in, 


Commercial Schools, 470 
“Common carriers,” 605 
“Community of interest,” 146 
Competition, Prohibition of, 
rae 653, 662; Restrictions 


of, 653 
Conduct; the standard of 
judgment, 345; The test of 
religious belief, 405 
Confederate veterans, 302 
Congress, Power of, 663, 710 
Cle appropriations, 
20 
Conservatives and radicals, 59 
Constitution, Federal amend- 
ment of, 325; A source of 
vital power, 411; Interpreta- 
tion of, 638; Stability of, 
601 A 
Constructive change, 615 
Consular bill, 405 
Copperheads, Pacifists of Lin- 
coln’s time, 842 
Corporate, abuses checked by 
Federal government, 733 
Corporate activity and ‘“ Law 
onesty,”’ 308 


: 


improper, , 


INDEX 


Corporate agencies, Good ef- 
fected by, 324, 651 


Corporate wealth, Nationa) 


power over, 111, 375, 4173 
Regulation of, 630; State 
relations with, 16, 416; 


Beneficial to community, 34 
Corporations, Abuses of, 296; 
Acquire ominous power, 
626; A natural evolution, 
79; A necessity, 34; And 
state legislation, 9, 36, 46, 
460, 652; As realty, 8; 
Blackmail of, 221; Bureau 
of, 192, 236, 420, 661, 712, 
721; Campaign contributions 
from 221; Commissioner 
of, 113, 379; _ Dishonest 
work by, 660; Efforts of to 
obstruct law, 292, 296-298; 
Enforcement of law against, 
580; Evils of, 80; Extrava- 
gance not reason for non- 
taxation of, 24; Federal 
control of, 36, 53, 65, 66, 
108, 169, 311, 459, 629, 648, 
652, 663, 717; Growth of, 
59, 310; Inadequacy of state 
control over, 232; Indif- 
ference of public to, 629; 
Indiscriminate raid on, 660; 
Interstate, 87; Instruments 
of industrial power, 612; 
Justice for, 376, 629; Laws 
of in Massachusetts, 47; 
Lawyers for, 410; Perma- 
nence of, 656; Publicity of, 
147; Responsibilities of, 6513 
Rights of, 376; Taxation of, 


I, 7 

Corporations, Bureau of, 192, 
236, naeO Gory | 7x2, A203 
Commissioners of, 113, 37 

Corruption, Demagogues and, 
451; In politics, 614; Web 
of, 725-726 

Courts, Decision of, 678; Fed- 
eral, 639; Hostility to, 677; 
Interpretations by the, 662; 
State, 639 

Credit, Uncertainty in, 666 

Crime, Definition of, 645, 687 


Criminal cases, Government 
+ right of appeal in, 439 
Criminal jurisprudence, Our 


system of, 365 

Criminal laws, 676 

Criminal prosecution, Immun- 
ity from, 354 


1083 


Criminal rich, 728 
Cuban reciprocity treaty, 201 


Currency, Injurious effect of 
debased, 92; Elastic, 187, 
351, 668, 689; Fluctuations 
of, 352, 479; Need of _re- 
vision, 432, 477, 666; Sys- 
tem, 154 

California, Constitution of, 
713 


Campaign contributions from 
corporations, 221, 438; Law 
against, 438 


x 


D 
Dairy Commissioners, 


of, 665 
Davidson, G. A., 713 
Demagogue, Aversion for, 637 
Democracy, Industrial, 606 
Democracy secures equality of 
opportunity, 611 
Democrats, Appeal to, 998 
Discontent, Preachers of, 449 
Dishonest business manage- 
ment, 641 
Dickens, Charles, In praise of 
the United States, 840 | 
Wie Opposed to selective, 
9 
A aee areas, Protection of, 
23 


Action 


E 


Economic problems, 30, 40 
Economic chaos, 601 
Economic stability, 92, 184 


Education, A proper system 
of, 340 
Edvcational system, Reforms 


needed in, 989 

Eighth commandment, 376 

Eight-hour law, 356, 402, 454, 
682; Constitutionality of, 
682; In Panama, violators 
of, 359 

Elevator allowances, 330 

Elkins law, The, 400 

Employees, Petition of to 
Congress, 362; Railway, 664; 
Rights of, 726 

Employer, Rights of, 710 

Employers’ Liability law, 339, 
402, 455, 544, 679, 699, 738; 
In foreign countries, 681; 
In American navy, 132 


1084 


Equality the basis of the Re- 
public, 490; Of opportunity, 


729 

Equity the keynote of indus- 
trial reform, 487 

Evils, Corporation or “ Trust,” 
43, 44, 78, 327; Industrial 
and economic, 405, 636; In 


execution of criminal laws, 
676; Of alley tenements, 
340; Of overcapitalization, 


375; Publicity a cure for, 
48; Remedies for, 18, 20, 
22, 32, 49, 54, 608, 646 
Evolution not revolution,” 
299 


F 


Family ties, Growing disre- 
gard of, 290 

Farmer, Education of, 588; 
High type of citizen, 473; 
Prosperity of, 422; Value 
of 688; Welfare of, 403 

Farmers, Place in civilization, 
812, 955, 967, 1025; Needs 
of, 17; as_ arch-typical 
Americans, 922 ) 

Farming population our main 
dependence, 523 

Farm labor, Scarcity of, 534 

Farm life, Economic problem 
of, 691; Social side of, 529 

Federal Government, Exten- 
sion of activity, 654, 665; 
And state powers, 409, 733) 
Charters of, 663; Commis. 
sion of for arbitration in 
labor disputes, control of 
corporations, national banks 


and railroads, 53, 459, 599, _ 


613; Corporations of, 663; 
Courts of, 639, 677; And 
the farmer, 473; Increase 
in power of, 410; Investi- 
gation of labor disputes, 
343, 456; Regulation of in- 
terstate railways, 239; Sov- 
ereignty of over ‘ Trusts,” 
31; Supervision of over cor- 
porations, 275, 266, 322, 498, 


Fifty -ninth congress, Record 
of, 398 

Financial crises averted, 352 

Financial stability insured by 
Government, 92 

Financial stress, 735 


INDEX 


Financial success, 646 

Financial trouble, 642 

Flag, One, and language, 827, 
887, 912 

Floods, Prevention of, 623 

Ford, Henry, 1000 

Foreign legislators, Failure of, 


712 

Fors trade, Encouragement 
of, 671 

Forests, Devastation of, 626; 
Effective preventers of 
floods, 624; National policy 
of, 551, 624; Preservation 
of, 476; Products of, Tarif 
on, oe 

Fort, Governor of New Jer- 
sey, 716 

Fortunes, Accumulation and 
abuses of, 646; Discrimina- 
tion between honest and dis- 
honest, 374; National con- 
trol of, 647; Private and 
corporate, Increase in, 32; 
Twofold test of. 4913 
Wrongfully acquired, 22 

Franchises as realty, 5, 8, 13; 
Law of, 154, 209 

Free speech an 
Foundation 
rests in, 991 

Free, trade and reciprocity in- 
compatible, 214 


free press, 
of Democracy 


G 


Gaynor and Greene case, 722 


Germany, Why we declared 
war on, 904; Inhuman 
cruelty of, 911; Must be 


beaten, 946, 950, 1004 
Gladstone, Withana Evart, 630 
God, Fear, and take your own 

part, 829 
Golden Rule in business and 

political life, 647 
Gold standard, 199, 205 
Government, Federal, and the 


wage earner, 127; Aid of 
for the individual, 56, 57; 
Buildings of, 367; Coopera- 


tion of with state, 415, 666; 
Difficulties of dual form in, 
602; Employees of and labor 
unions, 159; For and by the 
plain people, 426; Land pol- 
icy of, 591; Oil, coal and 
gas fields of, 693; Policies 


INDEX 


of, 649; regulation of cor- 
porations, 420; Responsibil- 
ity of for employees, 700; 
Right of appeal by, 363; Su- 
pervision of over commerce, 


industry and wealth, 606, 
651 

Government control, 954 
Government control of 


schools, 471 

“Government Ownership,” 15; 
Of railways, 304, 418, 461 

Grain-producing industry, 691; 
Inspection of, 692 

Grange movement, The, 475 


H 


“Half truth the most dan- 
gerous falsehood,” 609 
Harbors, Improvement of, 620 
Harriman, E. H., as an “ un- 
desirable citizen,” 486; 
Boasts of, 437; Case of, 
710; Delegate to Kepubli- 
can National Convention, 
Sy Correspondence of with 
oosevelt, 426; his dislike 
of for Roosevelt, 427 
“‘ Hearstism,” 437 
Heney, Francis J., letter of, 


713 

Henry’s, John S., letter from 
Roosevelt, 493 

Bene act, Features of, 
50 

“High finance,” a term of 
scandal, 726; Corruption in, 


22 

Hillis, Newell Dwight, 902 

Hindenburg, General von, 913 

Holt, Judge, Decision of con- 
cerning rebates, 441 

Home markets, Results in, 
692 

Honest man, Interest of the, 
646 

Honesty never unilateral, 390 

ones in business world, 
42 

Hostility_to wealth, 321 

Hough, Judge, of New York, 
10 


7 

Humphrey’s Judge, ‘ Immu- 
nity ” decision of, 362 

Hun within our gates, 818; 
Terrorism of the, 849 


1085 


I 


Ideals of national life, 392 

Immigration, 356, 361; In the 
South, 539 

Immunity, Justice of, 364 

tusgine account of the Nation, 
70 

Income tax, 465, 671; De- 
clared unconstitutional, 672; 
Desirable, 672 

Indian lands, 384 

Individual, the, character of, 
632; Citizenship of, 422; ef- 
fort of, 41; fortunes of, 
311; qualities of mecessary 
for success, 72, 91; Rights 
of, 17, 30, 56, 610, 704 

Individualism, Unrestricted, 
an evil, 573 

Industrialism, Conditions of, 
629; Growth of, 731; Inter- 
state, 606 Ty 

Tac ustriess Specialization of, 
7 

Inflated capitalization, 706 

Inheritance Tax, 465,- 
672 

Injunctions in labor disputes, 
340, 667, 703, 738 

Injustice not to be tolerated, 


671, 


630 
Inland navigation, a _ vital 
problem, 623; Development 
of, 616 
Inland seaboard, An, 622 
Inland waterways, 587, 747; 
Commission of, 555, 625, 
626, 628; Improvement of, 
6 


15 
Inefficiency, Our, 876 
“ Innocent stockholders,” 
Rights of, 723 
Inspection, National 
of, 692 
Insurance, 237; Federal regu- 
lation of, 347, 349 
Institutions, Ruin of our, 646 
Interest charges increased, 667 
Interior Department, 554 
Internal affairs, 399, 636 
International commercial con- 
ditions, 166 


system 


Internationalism, the foe of 
patriotism, 973 
Interstate business, Govern- 


ment supervision of, 710 
Interstate Commerce, 6o1, 612, 
757; Clause of, in the consti- 


1086 


tution, 629; Commission of, 
238, 244, 306, 328, 329, 354, 
355, 356, 379, 431, 460, 465 
504, 655, 705, 7213 Control 
of, 654, 705, 731; Law of, 
208, 382, 400, 420, 460, 739; 
Nation’s lack of power over, 
602; Railways engage in, 
655; Regulated by govern- 
ment, 180, 182, 325, 652 
Interstate common carriers, 


5 

Interstate 419, 
612, 659 

Interstate railways, Combina- 
tion of, 707; Difficulties in 
just operation of, 658; Fed- 
eral inspection of, 678; Gov- 
ernment supervision of, 706; 
National control of, 603; 
Regulation of, 239; Situa- 
tion of, 604 

Interstate traffic, Handling of, 
707; Government control of, 
707 

Interstate transportation, 


corporations, 


117, 


327 
Investors, Swindle of, 645 
Iowa and her railways, 507 
Irrigation, 128, 476, 556 


J 


fea Andrew, 608 

axon, Honore, Roosevelt’s let- 
ter to, 483 

Johnstown, Pennsylvania, Ad- 
dress at, 899 

ser Trathe Association, The, 


5 

Judges, Criticism of, 448; 
Duties of, 445, 639, 7273 
Protest against, 678; Respect 
for, 727 

Justice, Absolute, 636; Ad- 
ministration of, 
tack on, 721; To 
uals, 301, 637; To labor and 
capital, 374, 421 


K 


Kaiserism and Bolshevism, 
equally perilous, 991 
Kansas City, speech on pre- 
paredness at, 796 
nox, ttorney General, 
Neier Securities’ suit by, 
41 


INDEX 


L 


Belief in organized, 
884; Capital and, 25, 188, 
266; Combinations of, 657, 
7393 Conditions of, 705; 

ignity of, 689; Disputes 
of, 343, 445, 676, 738; 
Leader of, 628; Legislation 
for, 339; Of women and 
children, 454; Organization 
of, 134, 704; Organization 
of, 67, 69, 173, 189, 403; 
Problems of, 29, 340, 3433 
Reduction of hours of em- 
ployment of, 453; Right to 
organize, 755, 955; Rights 
and wrongs of, 677; Rights 
of, 1024; Troubles of, 130, 
224, 273; Unions of, 656, 
684, 729; Unions of among 
overnment employees, 229 

Labor cases, 444, 703 ‘ 

Labor men guilty of wrong- 
doing, 687 

Lafayette — Marne-day_ ad- 
dress, 970 

Land fraud cases, 420, 722 

Landlords, The profit of, 627 

Landowners and settlers, In- 
terest of, 729 

Language, One flag and one, 
827, 887, 912, 946 


Labor, 


Law-abiding property pro- 
tected, 718 A 
Law, and _ public sentiment, 


675; And the railways, 628; 
Administration of, 637, 641, 
655, 721; Anti-trust, 661; 
Contempt for, 651; Controls 
industrial development, 77; 
Definition of, 21; Delays of, 
$053 Device to grade, 653; 
nforcement of, 270, 628; 
Evasion of, 646; Fearless 
administration of, 48; Lim- 
itations of, 633; Obedience 
to, 196; Efficiency of, 440; 
Regulating railways, 495; 
Restraints of, 3375 Suprem- 
acy. of, 141; Violated by 
traffic associations, 658 
Law-breakers, 152 
Law-defying wealth, 
of, 719 
“ Law-honesty,” 314, 374 _. 
Laws, Anti-trust, 656; Diffi- 
culties in enforcing, 676; 
Should be enforced, 39; 


Control 


INDEX 1087 
Fake, 46; For changing Manufacturing centers, Growth 
conditions, 300; Good, in- of, 616 » 
dispensable, 632; Just_ ad- McKinley, President, and the 


ministration of, 27; Lack 
of proper, 645; Necessity of 
good, 685; need of strength- 
ening, 675; Nonenforcement 
of, 656; Will not produce 
happiness and _ prosperity, 
632; Wise, bring about 
prosperity, 31 

Lawsuit an inadequate method 
against railroads, 383 

League of Nations, 890, 972, 
1o2z1; Article in Metropoli- 
tan Magazine on the, 1046 

Lee, General Robert E., 634 

Legislation, helps general 
prosperity, 650; Limits of, 
poe Need of honest and 
efficient, 632; Radical, high- 
ly injurious, 120 

Levee building, Government’s 
part in, 620 

Liability of employers, 455, 
£38 : 

Liberty, not a liberty to 
wrong others, 653; Through 
law, aye 

Liberty Loan, 870, 876 

License act, Advisability of a, 


663 

Lincoln, Abraham, 607, 9373 
Attitude of towar evil- 
doers, 391, 937; Contrasted 
with Woodrow Wilson, 991; 
Idea of regarding equality, 


674; Spirit of, 401, 736, 
1043 
M 
Mails, Use of, 712 
Maine convention, Speech at 
the, 906 
“* Malefactors of great 


wealth,” 570 

Man, Duties of, 641 

Marshall theory, The, 600 

Marshes and overflow lands, 
Reclamation of, 623 

Martin resolution, The, 363 

Massachusetts corporation 
laws, 47 

Material welfare 
spiritual life, 249 

Manual labor, Negroes and, 
385; Dignity of, 520; Value 
of, 385 


and the 


Spanish war, 106; Monu- 
ment, Roosevelt’s speech at 
unveiling of, 575; Policy of, 
103 

Meat-inspection law, 665 

Meat-packing business, 
vision of, 420 

Men, Interests of, 650 

Mexico, 312, 790, 841 

“Miller Case,’’ Roosevelt’s let- 
ters concerning, 159 

Millionaire a trustee of his 
wealth, 408 

Milwaukee, Speech at, 749 

Mineral resources of United 
States, 552 

Bhiscs, A Federal bureau of, 
95 

Mississippi River, States along 
the, 640; Utilization of, 618 

Mississippi Valley, 640; Nat- 
ural resources of, 616; TPo- 
litical and commercial im- 
portance of, 617; Possibility 
of development in, 618 

Mob, Government by 432, 637; 
Violence by, 421, 639 

Money, Excessive rates in 
New York, 667; Fluctuation 
on interest, 666; Stringency 
of, 648 

Monopoly, Legalized, 757 

Monopolies, Control of, 730 

Monroe Doctrine, 838 

Motherhood, 157 

Moyer, Haywood and Debs as 
“ undesirable citizens,” 484 

Moyer-Haywood trial, 493 

“Muck-rakers,”’ 367, 370 

Mudslinging vs. whitewashing, 


Super- 


369 . : 
Municipal ownership, 2 


N 


National banks, Act creating, 
666; Supervision of, 663; 
To issue notes, 478 

National constitution, Makers 
of the, 652 

National duty and ideals, 777 

National educational system, 
faults in, 518 

National forests, 551 


1088 


National Government, A model 
employer, 679; Codperation 
with state governments, 732; 
Duty of, 653; Failure of to 
exercise its authority, 733; 
Insures financial stability, 
92; More power for, 493; 
Protection of for corpora- 
tions, 658, 659; sovereignty 
of, 652; Supervision of over 
railroad accidents, 678 


National greatness, End of, 
643; Dependent upon indi- 
vidual citizens, 410 

National honesty, Efforts to 
secure, 729 

National incorporation law, 


564 

National political development 
determined by the West, 617 

National system of irrigation, 
420 

Nation, As a_ whole, 640; 
Competent and efficient sov- 
ereign, 612; Destruction of, 


641; Future of, 341, 735; 
Growth of, 638; Prosperity 
of, 641; Saving the, 643; 
Well being of, 643; Will 
aid the states, 685 
Naturalization bill, 405 
Natural resources, Abuse of, 
627; Conservation of, 549, 


597, 627; Utilization of, 540 
Navigable highways, 640 
Navy, Need of a great, 859; 

Upbuilding the, 420 
Negro, and the war, 1028; 

Square deal for the, 1035 
Negroes and manual work, 


335 

Neill, Commissioner Chas. P., 
Report of, 386 

New England railways, 380 

New York, Notable address 
at, 991 

New York Central Railroad, 
381, 443. 

New York City, Chamber of 
Commerce in, 98; Insurance, 
banking and railroad scan- 
dals in, 724; National im- 
portance of, 98; Water sup- 
ply, 16 

Nichols Law, 6 

Nomination, Declining a, 773 

Non-partisan League, 1053 

Northern Securities Company, 
Case against, 117 


INDEX 


oO 


Obstructionist, The part of 
the, 400 

Oil industry, 354 

Organization, An age of, 307; 
/sefulness of, 40 

Organized labor, ‘Rights of, 
227 

Overcapitalization, 
Check on, 659 


P 


Pacifists, Harm done by, 837; 
nents of righteousness, 
960 

Packing Houses, Abuses of, 
386; Injunctions against, 
118; Inspection of, 387, 459 

Pacific Cable, The, 420 

Panama Canal, 264, 358, 420, 
670; Assault on officials of, 

70; Difficulty of securfng 
aborers for, 359 

Panic, Speculation as a cause 
of, 649 
Panic of 1893, 94 

Parker, Judge Alon B., accu- 
sation of against Cortelyou 
and Roosevelt, 221 

Party differences, 635 

Patriots sane or hysterical, 372 

Patriotism, Duties of, 833 

Pauper labor, competition with, 
519 

Pennsylvania, 
legislature, 411 

People, The, Interests of, 612, 
639, 644, 646; Needs of, 

6395 Representatives of, 644 

in 
6 


167, 327; 


Reforms by 


Pershing, General, Tribute to, 
89 

Personal 
ness, 165 

Philippines, 312 

Pinchot, Gifford, 553 

Pittsburgh, Penn., Address at, 


equation in busi- 


I 

Plutocracy, Government of, 
the 637 

Political reform, Team work 
in, 480 


Political unrest, 373 
Poor and rich, Bivision of, 


637 _. 
Porto Rico, 312 
Postal Savings Banks, 694, 


45 
ff Peectied politics,” 314 


INDEX 


“Predatory capitalists,” 567 

Predatory wealth, 22; Repre- 
sentatives of, 715 

Preparedness, 784, 789, 796, 
824, 839; What it means, 
857; Need of, 862, 916; Does 
not avert war, 874; Our lack 
of, 915 

Prevention better than rem- 
edy, 678 

Beales, Fealty to, 637 

Private car on railways, 264 

Privilege, Campaign against, 
705, 710 

Productive activity the cause 
of national poet 90 

eee: a 982 

rogress, dependent on 
physical Mibex. 688; As 
due to evolution, not revo- 
lution, 59 

Progressive party, Principles 
and aims of, 749, 758, 772 

Promises, Value of, 51 

Propaganda, pro- German, Bro 

Property, Abuses 396 
643; Defense of, eae u- 
ties and rights of, 496, 633, 
637, 639, 704, 716, 732; 
Management of, 645; Move- 
ment to conserve, 643; Pro- 
tection of, 645; Values of, 
Assault on, 660 

Prosperity as affected by 
money shortage, 694; Tariff 


and, 122; Of business, 31, 
613; Era of, 81, 177, 610; 
Evils of, 488; Foundation 


of, 633; Helped by legisla- 
tion, 650; Southern 
States, 641; Of Union, 641; 
Perils from, 438; Problems 
of, 58; Ruined by bad legis- 
lation, 32 

Protective tariff, 95, 200, 216; 
Benefits small and large 
ar 84; Permanence of, 
7O 

Provinctown speech, 561 
seudo reformers, 450 

Public, The, Assault on confi- 
dence of, 660; Conscience 
of, 646; "Demands of, 638; 
Honesty of, 686; Good of, 
the, Sole consideration, 671; 
Influence of its opinion, 
636, 675; Wrongs of, 660 

Public ownership of railways, 


336 


1089 


Publicity a remedy for abuses 
and corporation eyils, 23, 
25, 37, 47, 66, 112, 195, 659 

Public lands, 550, 627, 730 

Public Land Commission, 551, 


627 
Public utilities, 18; Regulation 


of, 717 
Pure Food Laws, 388, 
401, 420, 665, 721 


Puritan spirit, The, 562 


389, 


R 


“Race suicide,” 535 

Race, Success of any, 386 

Radicals and conservatives, 59 

Railroad men as soldiers, 68 

Railroad men’s organizations, 
Benefits of, 71 

ape president, Speech of 


Railroad profession brings out 
the sterner virtues, 74 

Railroad rates, 378, a Ab- 
normally low, 706; Improper 
discrimination in, 319, 381; 
Legislation concerning, 375, 
495, 721; Regulation of 
259, 322, 664; Regulation of 
determined by inland water- 
ways, eh Objects of regu- 
reoniag ° 318; Too high, 


Railroad, Acidents and loss 
of life from, 678; Activity 
of, 660; Administrative con- 
trol of, 302; The public 
and, 513; As public high- 
ways, 709; Development of, 
303; Discrimination of, in 
coal and oil, 353; Em- 
ployees of, Limiting hours 


of, 338, 4533 Examination 
of accounts of, 332; Fed- 
eral control of, 605, 613; 


Government supervision of, 
304; Honesty of, 645; In: 
adequate for transportation 
needs, 621; In Iowa, 507; 
Inspection service of, 338; 
Justice to, 665; Legislation 
on, 254, 515; Management 
of, abuses in, 660; Need of 
improvement in, 664; Oper- 
ating expenses of increased, 
706; Over-capitalization of, 


1090 


502; Traffic Associations 
among, 708; Physical valua- 
tion of, 504; Previous and 
resent extent of, 603; 
egulation of by Congress, 
629; Rights and wrongs of, 
320, 321; Royal Commission 
of in England, 630; Safety 
appliances on, 197, 228; 
Uniting of, 382, 383; Vital 
user of connection between, 
393 
Railroad stocks, 
inflation of, 
tion in, 499 
Railroad suits 
117 
Railway securities, 
stricted issue of, 630 
Raw material, Production of, 


Promiscuous 
503; Specula- 


in the West, 


Unre- 


G91 

Reactionary, Aversion for 
the, 637 

Reaction, Ignorant and _ vio- 
lent, 646 

Real estate values, 3 

Rebates, 237, 305, 420, 464, 
511, 730 

“ Reckless overspeculation,” 
641 

Reclamation service, 549 

Reciprocity, and Tariff, 175; 


Treaties of, 185 
Reed, Thomas B., 919 
Referendum and recall, 765 
Reform, Conservative, 374; 
In public life, 638; Oppo- 
sition to, 638; Rational 
movement for, 646; The 
antidote to revolution, 615 
Regulation of liberty, Lack of, 


653 _. 
Republic, 


American, 640; 
Downfall of, 6373 Enemies 
of the, 437; Greatness of 


based on spiritual life, 407; 
Survival of, 637 
Republican party, Patriotism 
of, 907, 997, 1008; Leaders 
of, 1002 
Republican record on 
trial affairs, 203 
Republics of antiquity, 637 
Revenue laws, 350, 670 
Reynolds, James Bronson, Re- 
ee of, 386 
“Rich men,” 
poor men, and 
trust of, 538; 


indus- 


Division _ of, 
637; Dis- 


Fair treat-_ 


INDEX 


ment of, 257; Justice to 
and from, 575; Triumph of, 


37 
Rhetoric, Evils of, 

Rights, ‘Equality fe) Gee te 
Of property, 637, 638, 639 
Right, evotion to, 635; 

Sense of, 639 
as Righteousness 
nation,” 737 


exalteth a 


“arterics of 
trade,” 619 


“Rough Riders,” Organiza- 
tion of, 68 
Russia teaches us what to 


avoid, 920, 966, 984, 1038; 
as our ally, 1061 


iS} 


Safety-appliance law, 338, 543 

Safety appliances on railways, 
197, 228 

San Francisco, Disgrace of, 
724 

Santa Fe Railway Company, 
712, 713, 727 

Savings bank, a_ beneficent 
corporation, 79 

Sayings, Roosevelt, 1062 

Seve system, Defects of, 


Scraps of paper, 9 

Secretary of the ave 666 

Secret rates, 115, 379; Evils 
of, 380 

Secret rebates, 118 

Sectional antagonism, No dan- 
ger from, 316 

Secunia A fixed value of, 
4373. Gambling in, 711; 
Janipulation of, 645, 715 

Self-government, 346; Basis of 
national overnment, 149; 
Capacity for, 607; Popular, 
488; Sanity and poise indis- 
pensable to, 373 

Senators, Election by popular 
vote, 764 

Sherman act, 116, 208, 565 

Sherman, Jas. Ss Roosevelt's 
letters to, concerning E. H. 
Harriman, 426 

Slackers, 933 

Social conditions, Betterment 
of, 173; Contrast in, 33 

Social clearage in cities, 34 

Social development aided by 
government, 611 


INDEX 


Social future as a Nation, 6o1 

Social injustice in U. S., 681 

Socialism, Anarchy, and, 418; 
deas of, a menace to civi- 
lization, 674; Press of, 494; 
oo by social reform, 
15 

Socialism versus social reform, 
804 

Social problems, 163; Intensi- 
fied by “ Trusts,” 40 

Social reformer, Field for a 


2 

Social reform the preventive of 
Socialism, 615 

Social unrest, A period of, 373 

Social welfare, Menace to, 677 

Soil wash, Loss from, 624 

Soldier, the spirit of the, 50; 
Qualities of the, 300 

South benefited by Dept. of 
Agriculture, 690 

ae States, Prosperity of, 
41 

Special privilege, War against, 


481 

Springfield, Illinois, Speech at, 
957 

Springfield, Ohio, Address at, 
93 

“‘ Square Deal,” 158, 224, 252, 


307 

Standard Oil Trust, 83, 378, 
379, 384, 712 

State, The, and _ corporate 
wealth, 16; Powers of and 
Federal powers, 409; Courts 
of, 639; Legislation of, and 
corporations, oo lack of 
uniformity in legislation of, 
64; May repeal charters, 
716; Ownership in, 18; Pride 
in, 409; Rights of the, 481, 


503 Seta 
States along the Mississippi, 


640 

Steamboats, Federal inspection 
of, 678 

Steamboat inspection law, 678 

Stock and bond issues, Limita- 
tion of, 717; Increase in 
value of, 659 

Stock gambling, 646 

Stock market, Conditions in, 
643; Trouble in, 642 

Stock-watering, Evils of, 685 

Stock-yard abuses, 386; Re- 
ports on, 386; Inspection of, 


387 


1091 


Strikes, 744; And lockouts, 
4573 ederal investigation 
oi, 456, 682; Increase in 
number of, 683; Investiga- 
tion act of 1898, 684; Of 
telegraph operators, 682 

Sugar trust, 382 

Supreme Court (U. S.), and 
injunctions, 677; And em- 
Ployers’ liability, 681 

Swamps, Reclamation of, 623 

“* Swollen fortunes,” 283, 375, 
417 


Ay 


Tariff, Free trade and, 83; 
Prosperity and, 122; Reci- 
Pprocity and, 174; The 
trusts and, 75; Changes in 
ruinous to prosperity, 124; 
Changes of unwise, 93; RKe- 
ciprocal concessions in, 695; 
Law, 200, 212, 670, 6713 
Maximum and = minimum, 
349; On anthracite coal, 187; 
On forest products and wood 
pulp, 692; Policy of, favors 
interests of nation, 95; Re- 
adjustment of, 96; Policy o 
should be outlined by Con- 
ress, 6; Preserves the 
Sacdeni of living for the 
working man, 96; rates and 
schedules, 404; Reform in, 
90; Relations with Germany, 
695, 697; Removal of, 82; 
Revision of, 84, 125, 174, 
210, 211, 671, 746; Use of 
detectives, 697 

Taft, William H., 447, 702 

Taxation, Federal, 557; In- 
adequacy of, 19; By the 
state, 10; Of foreign capital, 
11; Power of, 257 

Tax, Franchise, 466; Income, 
469; Inheritance, 467, 468, 
557; On fortunes, 375; Re- 
vision of laws, 671; state 
board of commissioners, 14; 
Succession tax, 469 

Telegraph operators, Strike of, 
68 


3 
Temperance and the 
earner, 286 
Timber famine, 624 
Times, New York, 1013, 1014 
Timber lands, Destruction of, 
626 


wage- 


1092 


Tirpitz, Admiral von, 913 

Tobacco trust, 380 

Trade agreements and labor 
combinations, 739 

Trade unions, 291, 403; Per- 
manence of, 651 

Trafic associations and the 
law, 658 

Trans-Misssouri case, The, 658 

Transportation, Demand for, 
617; Greater facilities need- 
ed, 511; Problems of, 619; 
Report of commission on, 
378; root of industrial suc- 
cess, 335; Safe rather than 
cheap, 664 Ui 

Trust companies, Supervision 
of, 669 

“ Trusts,” 18, 24, 37,; Small 
dealers and, 84; ‘lariff and, 
75, 82, 85; Federal sov- 
ereignty over, 31; Hurtful 
to general welfare, 167; In- 
ternational, 44; Intensify 
problems of social conditions, 
o; Legislation against, 22; 
neffectual regulation of, 82; 
Remedy for, 49, 111, 113; 
Supervision of, a necessity, 
86; True definition of, 75 

Truth safer than falsehood, 
636 

Tuberculosis, War against, 572 

“Turning on the light,” 510, 
643 


U 
Uncle Sam, His own _ best 
friend, 840 
“Undesirable Citizen,” 437, 


483, 567, 628-629 
Union Army’s loyalty, 320 
Union, Devotion to, 393; Pres- 
ervation of, 392; Prosperity 


of, 641 
Union Oil Company, 714 
Urban population, Growth of, 
32 sin 
Universal service and training, 
985 


V 


Valley Forge, Democracy 


tested at, 887 


INDEX 


Ww 


Wage worker, The, a cardinal 
point of American Policy, 
671; Accidents to, 679; Cap- 
italist and, 220, 684; Farmer 
and, 318; Temperance and, 
286; Government and, 127; 
Friend of, 309; Justice to, 
636; Laws affecting, 705; 
Organization of, 704; Op- 
pression of, 646, 715; De- 


sirable qualities of, 318; 
Rights of, 612; Sympathy 
with, 639; Value of, 688; 


Welfare of, 171, 403 
Wages, Fair adjustment of, 


702 

“ Wall-Street-syndicate civiliza- 
tion,” 421 

Water supply in towns and 
cities, Purity of, 623 

War, How to win the, 886, 
962; Asleep though at, 872; 
This is the people’s, 909, 
951; Why we are at, 910; 
Speed up the, 906, 956; He 
kept us out of, 1018; Negro 
and, 1028 

War against successful dishon- 
esty, 649 
ater power, Significance in 
{ute development of, 623, 
24 

Waterways, advocated by rail- 
roads, 622; Development of, 
595, 596; National impor- 
tance of, 619; Open, 640 

Wealth, Abuses of, 633, 638, 
643; Controlled by U. S. 
government, 417; Crimes of, 
645; Corruptionist of, 391; 
Has no influence with the 
law, 675; Hostility to, 4, 12; 
Successful dishonesty of, 
646; Supervision of, 425; 
Use of, 402 

Wealthy wrongdoer, Punish- 
ment of, OMe 

West and Southwest, Secret 
rate system in, 381 

Wilson, quetiee James, 413 


Wilson, Woodrow, 756; Attack 
on, 993; Contrasted with 
Lincoln, 


99 
Wittenberg Cece Address 
at, 938 
Wood pulp, Tariff on, 692 


INDEX 


Woman’s suffrage, Champion 
of, 1007 

Women labor, 684, 340; In in- 
= 342, 685; Rights of, 
3 

Winien’s place in politics, 766 

Wood, General Leonard, 1060 

hyes'=7 aoe ks *s right to indem- 

Or injuries, 680, 701 


1093 


Working women, Legislation 
for protection. of 342 
basen oa Se “summum bo- 


World: ees York, rorg 

Wrong doing, Existence of, 
643; Punishment of, 646; 
Kemoving causes of, 343 


R781R 


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